“Workshop focuses on women's efforts to find venture capital”

 Nashville Business Journal, by Judy Sarles, March 30, 2001

The fund-raising process for growing a business is an on-going process, close to 100 attendees learned at a "Women Entrepreneurs Accessing Capital" workshop at Belmont University today.

"Women on the whole are less prepared for the fund-raising process," says Barbara Garvin, director of The Center for Entrepreneurship's Women's Programs at Belmont, which hosted the workshop, an interactive event designed to help women build their businesses and obtain funding for their businesses.

Laura Campbell, president and CEO of Laura Campbell & Associates, served as facilitator for the event, which featured panelists Yonnie Chesley, CEO of Gordian Health Solutions Inc.; Julie May, president and CEO of bytes of knowledge and bytes of knowledge Information Technology Strategy Group; and Cherryl Carlson, president and CEO of Encore Interactive Solutions.

Venture capital funding has increased for women-owned businesses from less than 2 percent of $4.9 billion, or $98 million, in 1993 to 4.6 percent of $35.4 billion, or $1.6 billion in the first half of 2000, according to the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs. There has been a rapid jump in the amount of venture capital invested in women-owned businesses in the last several months, says Campbell. "Investors typically have distinct preferences on what type of investments they like to do," she says.

Chesley says her company has grown through acquisitions and it is currently negotiating for four additional acquisitions.

Encore Interactive Solutions, founded in 1999, has raised $1.3 million so far. "We are financed right now through equity," says Carlson. The company has no debt. However, its financing was acquired in small chunks as the enterprise developed. "It's a hard way to go because it's real hard to get momentum," she says.

May started her business with $1,800. She decided to seek a partner who could give her sage business advice. "I was looking for a partner and a bank wasn't necessarily a partner to me," she says. So she chose Clayton Associates, the Franklin-based venture capital firm founded by Clayton McWhorter, as her partner. When her company was a startup, she owned 100 percent of her business. Now with a partner, she relinquished 35 percent. "It's hard to give up your baby," May says.

The workshop was sponsored by XO Communications Inc., UPS and the Nashville Business Journal.