The senate, Small Business and entrepreneurship, three women testified about their experiences running companies. And working to promote and increase ownership and investment rolls for women in American Business and industry. This is about an hour. I know everybodys having a good time and networking, and moving the enterprise forward. We really should get started. We have two votes starting at noon, were going to be on a bit of a short string here. That shouldnt in anyway denny great the importance of this hearing of the Small Business committee. What were going to do is explore ways to help Women Owned Businesses reach their full potential and grow the american economy. I want to thank my colleague for working together on this. This is of great importance to all of us and all america. As you know, october is National WomensSmall Business month. Fee malentrepreneurs employ more than 9 million workers, they contribute 1. 6 trillion in sales to our national economy. And are capable of even more as its Fastest Growing sector. Just a few weeks ago. Sb administrator, Linda Mcmahon joined me in my home state of idaho. My wife and i and she travelled to a number of businesses. I often say, entrepreneurs want more time to give to their businesses. They are negatively impacted by the expense of time and resources it takes to comply with our complicated and burdensome tax code. It is it for this reason that tax reform can and should be part of todays discussion. In fact, the National Association of womens Business Owners asked this committee to present on tax reform at their annual conference just last week, because that is the most important issue to the hundreds of business women Business Owners that belong to that. Women impacting Public Policy were at this desk in this very room, just a few weeks ago, for a bipartisan discussion centered on the need for tax reform. Our hearing today will look at many issues, this is a tax reform is a top mind issue on all of our parts. Thank you for being here today. And i look forward to a robust discussion. Id ask you, each of the panel member members first of all, thank you for coming to the hearing today. Well ask that you submit anything you want in writing, and we will certainly include it in the record, so with that, id like to yield to senator shaheen. Im delighted that were holding this hearing this morning, because as you point out. Women owned firms are significant as we look at the future of employment in this country theyre growing five times faster than the national average. But Women Owned Businesses still face head winds. On average they earn less than male owned firms, employ only 8 of the nations private workforce, and produce 4 of business revenues, a share that has remained the same for the past 20 years, the question really is why . Why are the other statistics around women own eed businesses not changing, and thats one thing were going to explore this morning. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our outstanding witness witnesses. Thank you very much senator. Id like to introduce our three witnesses here today, and id first like to welcome ms. Elizabeth gore who is an entrepreneur in residence. Never heard that title before. Im sure youll enlighten us on that. Goals around helping small and Medium Business scale businesses. And prosper. Im also pleased to welcome tracy chad well. Founding partner of 1843 capital, an early stage Venture Capital fund. And id like to recognize Michelle Richards, who served as the executive director of the great lakes womens business council. We all know the counsel does great work. Thank all of you for coming. Ms. Gore, well start with you. Thank you for being here. Senator wish and all of you, its a real honor to testify about what i think could be the greatest bipartisan opportunity that this country is seeing, and its Women Entrepreneurs. Just this week ive been in san francisco, sioux falls, south dakota, new york city and now d. C. Im from northern california, i can tell you that women in all of those areas have the most potential to succeed, but they are facing numerous barriers. While we are starting businesses twice as fast as our male counterparts as you said, very proud of that, we do have conservatively higher fail rate, only 2 of us are making over a Million Dollars with our businesses in this country. I think that is a 98 opportunity that we all have to improve many i hope none of you have the number seven as your favorite number. Because for some reason were stuck on seven. Women founders only get 7 of Venture Capital in this country. Only 7 of Venture Capitalists are women, and something thats increasingly important. Only 7 of the stories are women founders. We have to see it to be it, and we have to change that. Over the last 2 1 2 years i had the great pleasure to serve in my home state of texas. And im also an entrepreneur myself, and a cofounder of alice, which is the first ever Machine Learning and achltd tool that helps any women, minority or veteran founder find these resources they need to scale. I found that the barriers really sit in four pillars. Networks, technology and talent. Those really are our barriers. So ill just start with access to capital. This is the number one issue facing women in my opinion. Whether im in sioux falls and applying for an sba loan. This is a major problem. I think we need to inning centy advise our Venture Capital friends to increase that 7 number. Its going down in fact, its grown down substantially, and the 2017 numbers are going to show a significant drop in Venture Capital. My colleague will talk a lot more about that, bias does exist in Venture Capital. The me too moechblt is not just about hollywood. Id also like to encourage our sba to continue to strengthen. Its a critical part of our country. Women are five times more likely to get sba loans, theyre the amounts they get are 2 1 2 times lower than their male counterparts. Something i hope we look into. Another thing is certifications. Im proud to see continuing supplier diversity programs. Women owned business certifications, theres one thing we need to change. The 8a Certification Program with the u. S. Sba is an excellent program. If you get venture funding, and those Venture Capitalists are male, you are not considered women owned any more. You cannot get the certification and be venture backed. This is something we can simply change through legislation. That is my top recommendation for this year. Lets continue to work with innovators and understand now sources of funding. Dell spends 4 billion a year, just through our supply chain. Crowd funding is supporting women more than men. So what other innovative sources can we do . Most women depend on banks for access to capital. We talk about venture, 96 of women are counting on bank loans, just this year, we came out to see that only 30 of companies owned by women were able to get bank loans in the first part of 2016. The next is access to networks. You know, we dont golf as much of our gentlemen counterparts do. I love the grants that have been going to accelerators in the u. S. Government. Theyre very important. Access to technology. Every company is now a technology company. Women are less likely to access technology, and we have to continue to move that forward. So on behalf of my fellow amazing Women Entrepreneurs, this is a time of opportunity, its a time that yes were challenged. But we are the best economic bet if we get the access to capital we need. We will bring 30 billion in gdp to this country in one year. Thank you. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, elizabeth, that was terrific. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the senate committee. Thank you Ranking Member shaheen for the opportunity to testify today before your committee. Its a pleasure and horner to introduce myself, and give my perspective. My background, im an attorney, who had my first exposure, when i worked for adelaide stevensons company. I then went to baker capital. Ive been investing in women founders in the technology area. And i have founded 1843 capital. Its the year that ada lovelace wrote the first computer program. My partners are incredible women. An engineer who built and sold her own Cyber Security security. The ceo of the veneta project. Delivering Educational Programming and premium networking for women founders, funders. Theyre Strategic Partners in an effort to scale Women Businesses and fund them. The really good news is that things are working. The accelerator is allowing 2,000 female funded companies per year. Theyve been able to channel 50 million to early stage companies. As you said earlier, nationwide, Women Owned Businesses are growing in number at five times the national average. Statistically, women outperform as well. Women operated venture backed Tech Companies achieved 12 higher revenues. This is no doubt due to Public Private partnerships. The sba has been a Strong Partner as well. By guaranteeing loans, they are giving women the fuel they need to scale their businesses. And they are doing this without taxpayer subsidies. As a Venture Capitalist, ive had the opportunity to invest in World Class Companies founded by women that are successful and do great things for the world. Beauty counter is a woman founded company, which produces personal products for care that are free of toxic chemicals. This company has revenues much stronger than most of the unicorns out there, and they employ 35,000 consultants. Silver nest is a company in colorado that uses technology to match people over 50 with roommates. This helps them solve the problem of Financial Insecurity and loneliness. An algorithm based management platform, this helps banks dem of course rah ties wealth management, so everyone can save and invest, regardless of the size of their accounts. Something truly unique about marstone is user experience. Most people are intimidated by math and finance but margaret knew this, and developed an earner face that was accessible to everyone. She knew that to have the biggest impact the company had to have a foundation and design. As we move into our next chapter in technology, dominated by artificial intelligence, the skills of coding or writing a algorithms are going to become commodities. By far, the most serious barrier to the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem is the lack of funding. Women are able to create businesses now, because the cost of starting a business has come down, and they dont need outside investment to get started, the capital to scale is inaccessible. Beauty counter is one of the largest and Fastest Growing companies period. Women founders as a group received 2. 19 of Venture Capital dollars. A lot of reasons for this exist including lack of women as women venture partners. Women founded Venture Capital firms are 28 out of 800 firms. One of the most impactful things that you as senators could do would be to encourage your state Pension Funds to take a harder look at women managers and a harder look at their underlying portfolios, its impossible to legislate against unconscious buy as, however, it is possible to support and to fund positive role models. Thank you very much. Im really bad at the technology, audio part. My name is Michelle Richards and im the executive director for great lakes womens business counsel. I want to share our experience as an organization dedicated to supporting women Business Owners for the past 33 years. As a micro lender since 1993, we have made over 6. 5 million in loans with the average size of 20,000. These loans have created 1700 jobs. In early 1990, we became an sba Womens Business Center. This created a Stable Funding for us to build a platform for our training and counseling program. And weve been able to serve more than 10,000 women Business Owners and entrepreneurs with it. Weve been a certifying partner for the womens Business Enterprise council. We currently have 1120 certified women Business Owners that generate 12. 3 billion in revenue annually and employ 48,500 u. S. Workers. Amazing. I am proud of our efforts to revitalize detroit. To date our Detroit Loan Program has provided 1. 3 million in loans, creating 72 jobs and retaining 100 more. For Small Businesses to succeed, they need what i call the three cs, capacity, capital and customers or contracts. In my view, Women Entrepreneurs lack access to all three. Capital access is a chronic barrier for women Business Owners, our team has heard countless stories of the bias against women when they attempt to obtain business finance. I recently was told by an established woman business owner, that a bank owner came to the meeting, and asked if her husband would be joining us. She said no he wouldnt because hes not part of the business. If women arent able to obtain equal access to capital, they cant grow their business to full potential. Women are highly underrepresented in federal contracting, although the federal government met its goal of awarding 5 of eligible federal contracts to Women Owned Businesses in 2015, it failed to reach the mark in 2016 about the market share needs to grow because federal contracting has a tremendous impact on many Women Owned Businesses. For example, katie bigelow. President of metal ops, received her first contract with the air force for 80,000 after two years of trying. That contract created the past performance needed to win her most recent contract award for 9 bnt 1 million. Women are unable to access basic tools we need, that we know work for them, they need training and coaching to grow their businesses and become job creators. Its important to modernize and grow a nationwide network of counselors for women entreprene entrepreneurs. Great lakes wbc has experience to offer the committee these recommendations. First and foremost, we need to modernize the Womens Business Center program. The house of representatives included the Womens Business Center legislation as part of the fiscal year 18 National Defense authorization act. Which would increase the 30yearold cap on grant levels. 30 years, we strongly urge the senate to keep this provision in the ndaa. We have over 500 wosb certified women in our center. Finally, there should be a dedicated commitment to programs that are proven to provide capital to women Business Owners. Congress should continue to support programs like the Small Business micro loan program and the Community DevelopmentFinancial Institution fund. Distinguished senators, thank you for this opportunity to present this testimony. Thank you so much. To all three of you. I noted that all three of you made reference to the capital situation. And the access to it. Those figures certainly arent pretty. As far as the capital that is received by Women Entrepreneurs. Anybody who has even a passing knowledge of economics knows that access to capital is critical to the success of business, the economy. Barriers in that regard really need to be knocked down. I note youre finding a flaw in the federal system, where aa certification is lost when they get funds from a male Venture Capital fund. It would be interesting to see if they found out the banks of the Women Owned Businesses was run by an all male board of directors, which is exactly the same situation. Senator shaheen and i have already agreed were going to take a run at this. The federal government doesnt always and thats a result of your testimony by the way. The federal government doesnt always do things exactly the way they should, thats why were here. Well take a run at that for you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I hope all of the members of the committee will join us in that effort. It seems like thats a nobrainer that would make a big difference in access to capital. I want to go back to an issue that miss richards referenced, and i think you did as well, ms. Chad well in yo