Women Respond to Doubts
 Jessica Jackley is a well-respected woman in the start-up world. She is best known for being the co-founder of Kiva.org – a pioneer of the microloan category. At the moment, she is in the process of start-up ProFounder.com – a website that crowdsources funding and helps users to raise money from their own community.
Jessica has raised investments from more than 30 investors for this project, and one of the angel investors admitted that he was skeptical to invest with a company headed by a woman. He said that women are less reliable than men in the workplace because having children and pregnancy can distract them. This led to some interesting debate across the web. Some of the responses from women were as follows; we hope that you find them inspiring because we believe there is no reason why women cannot have children and achieve great things in the workplace too.
Jessica Jackley herself said: “I’m busy running said company. I expect to be even busier with not just one but two babies (yes, to be clear, I’m expecting twins) arriving this fall. And as all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest. So, while Paige’s post was intriguing and important, it wasn’t urgent – until it came to my attention that my team was somewhat bothered by it. When they saw one of our investors questioning my abilities as a leader, they were confused and frustrated. And so I am now replying on their behalf as well as mine.”
Isabel Maxwell, the founder and president of Maxwell Communications: “When my sister and I co-founded Magellan [first search engine in 1993] and worked all the hours that god gave, when we finally sold the company and Excite gave me a goodbye party, my then 11-year-old son came, and when the time came for speeches, he gave one – which started out something like, as he looked around the room with his big blue eyes, 'I don’t know if you all realize how hard my mom worked...'"
Cindy Alvarez, head of products at KISSmetrics: “As someone who joined a startup at 5.5 months pregnant, worked up until 3 days before giving birth, and came back full-time 6 weeks later, I would question the assumption that your cofounder will somehow become incompetent due to childbearing. 'Working smart' is the new 'working long,' and nothing makes you ruthlessly prioritize like having a baby.”
Tereza Nemessanyi, co-founder and CEO of Honestly Now: “Parenting creates a laser focus that you didn’t have before. Through parenting I have learned to operate at a totally different capacity. I don’t hesitate to say what I think because there is not time to do business any other way. Who has time to screw around? Frankly you hear so little from us because we don’t have time to linger on chat boards.”
Related posts:
- Top Women to Follow on Twitter
- Should Women be Treated Differently in the Workplace?
- Women in Business (Infographic)
- Women In Leadership Positions: 20 Female CEOs
- Successful Women Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling
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