PAT LORET DE MOLA – ‘Critical information’

To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to know your business inside out and backward. But introspection can result in losing the bigger picture: money.

That’s where Springboard 2001 comes in. Springboard is a nonprofit entity that not only offers a forum for women entrepreneurs to make their cases in front of venture capitalists, but also coaches them boot-camp style and hones their ability to convey exactly what venture capitalists want to hear when they decide what to look for in a new prospect.

“It’s an incredibly transformative program,” said Andrea Silbert, chief executive officer of the Center for Women & Enterprise, which has locations in Boston, Worcester and Providence, R.I. The center is a sponsor of the Springboard event.

Silbert said Springboard isn’t just another venture forum.

“Most venture forums – people apply, then they go and present, and that’s it. What we do is go through a very rigorous selection process using the venture capital community as well as attorneys and service providers,” she said.

This year, 23 of the 150 applicants were selected to present their pitch to a forum of about 200 venture capitalists on Nov. 9 at the Harvard Business School in Cambridge. But since being selected earlier this month, the entrepreneurs have been preparing at what some have called a breakneck, intensive pace.

Although the hottest area for investment continues to be biotechnology, this year there are a few entrepreneurs in the financial industry.

“There’s nothing like being able to sit down across the table from a venture capitalist and being able to ask them the questions you’ve always wanted to ask,” said Lois R. Scheirer, president of Lexington-based e-Vantage International. Scheirer was referring to the fact that volunteer venture capitalists actually help the entrepreneurs refine their presentations before the forum. Scheirer is seeking $2 million to $5 million to further her company. Currently she is the only full-time employee. Like other entrepreneurs, her company’s product is highly technical and fills a unique niche in the financial services marketplace. It creates a Web-based advisory platform to help exporters and importers manage currency risk in foreign markets.

Typically, companies export their products in U.S. dollars. Purchasing companies overseas have to purchase U.S. dollars to buy the product. If the dollar gets stronger, the price for your product increases, Scheirer explained.

“Companies know that they just don’t have the expertise to figure out a strategy to manage it. Who has that expertise? Well, the banks have that expertise,” she said.

But providing that education to clients is time-consuming and expensive in the level of service it requires. Enter Scheirer’s product.

“What we’ve done is simplify and automate the foreign exchange advisory-service capability and targeted that toward this marketplace. As a result, banks end up with cost-effective abilities to service and change the economics of service delivery for the banks, and at the same time, we’ve really transformed the management of currency risk for the exporter,” she said.

‘Specific Sell’
Scheirer has nearly 20 years of experience managing currency businesses. While that makes her an expert on what her product needs to do to be effective, that may be a detriment when it comes to seeking venture capitalist money.

“They might seem really accomplished, but when they go in to pitch to a venture capitalist, when they made their first pitches to us, they really didn’t touch on all the right things,” said Silbert. “It’s a very specific sell.”

Scheirer agrees, saying the coaching has been invaluable. She’s confident that come Nov. 9, she’ll be able to reach an interested audience.

Last year at the first Springboard event in Boston, about 40 percent of the presenters received funding, said Silbert. Although most venture forums don’t release their statistics, Silbert said she’s been told the success rate averages around 25 percent. Even more remarkable, said Silbert, is that although many businesses were dot-coms, 90 percent of last year’s presenters are still in business.

But while funding is the name of the game, there are other benefits and goals for Springboard. “I myself have already formed friendships with other entrepreneurs in this program,” said Scheirer. “We’re already talking about collaborations and what we can do together. That’s one whole side of this that I think is fantastic: building a network, particularly among women. There aren’t a lot of us.”

Silbert said the venture capitalist world is still 95 percent dominated by men.

The coaching received by applicants is “grueling,” according to New York-based Pat Loret de Mola, president of Trade Settlement. She’s seeking $5 million to help fully launch her company by the first quarter of next year.

Meeting with the coaches isn’t a tea-and-biscuit event. “They’re tough, they’re really tough and force you to rise to the next level, if you will, by really drilling you on your presentation, drilling you on the content of your business plan, your slides, just everything so you really distill your entire proposition and you really crystallize the elements that need to be conveyed to the investment community,” she said.

Her company is an Internet-based system that settles syndicated bank loans the day after a trade is executed.

According to Loret de Mola, the process is much more intensive and a more formal environment than she encountered when she went to her angel investors.

“[Springboard] is much more powerful and it reaches a much larger audience, so it’s much more effective in that sense,” she said.

While Loret de Mola believes her niche market is virtually untapped, her goals for the forum are tempered. “Our goal is simply to peak interest and provide enough critical information to the venture capitalist so they can come and talk to us afterward and start to develop a relationship that will, hopefully, translate to funding for our project as we execute or plan,” she said.

Loret de Mola said there seems to be an inverse relationship in the business world, where there are numerous women-led businesses but very few who have successfully tapped into the venture capitalist market.

“As far as the future, I think we’re going to see more and more women get funded, but I also think that we do need to see more women go into the venture capitalist industry. And that will be good all around,” said Silbert.

Nonprofit Offering Forum For Women Entrepreneurs

by Banker & Tradesman time to read: 4 min
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