 In the last 10 years, the number of women in the global workforce has increased by 250 million, and that trend is only rising. Compared to just a quarter century ago, more women and girls have access to higher education and capital, giving them greater opportunities to leverage their innovative ideas into businesses. Research finds that supporting female entrepreneurs boosts the country's markets by 12% GDP. In 2012, there was an estimated 126 million women starting new businesses and another 98 million running established businesses throughout the world. In the U.S. alone, women are starting 1,200 businesses a day and employing nearly 8 million people, generating $1.4 trillion in sales. Now that's a lot of cash. But what's more, these strong women are building a framework for young women and girls to enter the workforce with fewer obstacles in the future. But our work isn't done yet. Women in developed nations are half as likely to start businesses compared to men and even less likely in countries with fewer opportunities for female entrepreneurship. For success in this space, women need more female mentors, the same access to capital as men, and a change in perception that entrepreneurship is not only a masculine activity. And on top of the numbers, women are often caught between cultural expectations and the expectations of the workplace. Despite this, women entrepreneurs are breaking barriers, benefiting themselves, their families, and their home countries. The numbers are in. When women entrepreneurs are supported, economies grow. Well, I'm Michelle Shown, Office Director in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. The U.S. government and the Republic of India are co-hosting the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit GES in Hyderabad, India from November 28 to 30. The goal of the summit is to promote entrepreneurship by bringing together some of the world's most dynamic entrepreneurs, investors, and entrepreneurial ecosystem builders. The theme of this year's summit is Women First, Prosperity for All. And in the lead up to the GES, thank you for joining us for today's diversity in business interactive web chat. Here to speak with us about the importance of diversity and inclusion in business are three experts from an extensive and diverse set of experiences as entrepreneurs. Sitting to my left is Audrey Bracey Deegan. I hope I said that correctly. CEO of Step-by-Step Worldwide, an organization which uses the first thousand days of a child's life as a starting point for a range of health, education, and livelihood interventions that, step-by-step, connect mother's health to child development and community well-being. Also with us today is Desiree Stoller. Desiree leads Alumni Strategy and Engagement Efforts for Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization that equips and emboldens high-achieving women and men from underrepresented communities to realize their full potential. She is also an entrepreneur and founder of a product that was featured in ABC's Shark Tank in November 2015. I love that show. We have another member of our panel, Rahama Wright, joining us in the comments section here on Facebook to help field some of your questions. Rahama is the founder and CEO of Shea Yellen Health and Beauty, a social impact company she created after serving in the Peace Corps. Both Rahama and Audrey will attend this year's GES as entrepreneur delegates. And lastly, also participating in this chat is a group assembled at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. We will introduce them in a moment and are happy to have their voice in the conversation. Before I get started, I just wanted to mention that if you have questions for our panelists, please ask them in the comments section next to the video player or on Twitter using the hashtag GES2017. We'll try to answer as many of your questions as possible. I'm going to start the conversation by reporting the responses to a poll question that we shared on social media over the past couple of weeks. We asked, what aspect of women's entrepreneurship are you most interested in hearing about? We'll show the results here on the screen. As you can see, the stories of women entrepreneurs was the highest response followed by how women reinvest incomes in their families and communities and how to close the financing gap. So I think we should spend the first few moments here going over some of these important threads within our broader topic of supporting women entrepreneurs. Audrey and Desiree, what are your thoughts on this? Well, I think that in terms of the elements of success, I think I'm living proof that entrepreneurship is, regardless of age, is relevant. I came to this as a result of a career in politics and education and the social sector. I think that if you have the passion, the persistence, and the people that really support you, it makes it possible for you to indeed achieve and gain those results in the entrepreneurial space. So I don't know what success looks like for most other women, but for me, it's having the opportunity at this age to really achieve some things that are of most importance to me. That's absolutely beautiful. And I have to agree, coming from management leadership for tomorrow, where we have over 450 entrepreneurs that are pursuing opportunities in a range of different industry and sectors, what strikes me is that what resonates the most with the audience, but both within our community as well as the larger community of first generation, low income, underrepresented minorities who are all trying to establish themselves in the industry, they are drawn to stories of success. They want to see, for those of us who are trying to create transformative change, who are those who have attained a great deal of impact in their chosen sector, or who are those who have been able to raise a significant amount of money to the extent that they can actually build up the team and pursue the type of opportunity that they would like to have. Okay, thank you. We have another poll that you can answer here on Facebook during this chat. What is the biggest challenge women entrepreneurs face? A link to the poll is in the comments section. Feel free to answer it, and the panelists will respond to the results later in the program. Now let's go to our online viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, where Cultural Affairs Officer Craig Dicker will briefly introduce the group, and then we'll take a couple of questions from the audience. Hi, Craig. Hello, can you hear me? I can now, barely. Okay, I will try to speak as loudly as I can. Very briefly, we are joined here. Thank you very much for selecting us as one of the participating posts. We are joined here by a significant group of both students and women entrepreneurs. I'll introduce just a few of them to save time. First, we have Sureka Waldia, who is from WeCan, India. WeCan, India for your information, was a recent grantee, and they work with the Sherry Blair Foundation, as well as DTRI, to implement a fascinating program in North India. Also, Sumati Varma from the Delhi University, and she's brought eight of her students. She's doing some interesting work on women CEOs around the world. Immediately to my left is Gautika Dayal from the Indus Entrepreneurs, which is actually initially a U.S.-based organization, which now has, I think, 16 or 18 chapters here focusing on empowering entrepreneurs in general, and giving them mentorship and the kind of support they need. Then we have Anju Makin from Alchemy Communications, Rashmi Chandra from Wo Voyage. I'm just learning that her work is just fascinating and trying to facilitate women tourists and women travelers to India. Sidman Sharma, who is a student here from Delhi University, and then last but not least, Kavni Chahini, the founder of Culinary Communications, just to name itself that's intriguing. We've got quite a number of students here, as well as a number of other women entrepreneurs, and very anxious to begin with the questions. All right. Thank you, Craig. Does your audience have a question for us? Oh, they certainly do. We'll start with Gautika. Hello. It's such a pleasure to interact with all of you. My question is that we understand that there is more to gender diversity than just hiring more women. Just fulfilling the diversity quota is not a job well done. What are some of the steps that are being taken in organizations around the world to make diversity a part of the ethos and culture of an organization? We'd love to hear your experience around it. Okay. So the question was that it's not enough just to hire more women. What steps are actually being taken to increase the sort of gender diversity and steps in the environmental system? So that as part of the culture of an organization, there is more inclusiveness. There is more receptivity towards working and collaborating between men and women as the ethos of an organization, rather than just having the numbers there. Okay. All right. Audrey? For me, I think the real question is how do you make it part of the culture? And I talk about culture both in terms of a big C and little C, but I think it's the larger environment in which you're working, but it's also the culture within your particular working group. And I think that comes from leadership. And so it's not just a question of having people in the room, but it's actually hearing their voices in a way that makes them feel authentic and that they indeed have a contribution to make. And that takes time. And in a way that it's not just a female body imitating a male form of communication? Yes. Well, I think Desiree, your sort of smile, I came up through a time when you were frequently the only one in the room. And so there was this notion of you speak for women. And it's like, no, I speak for me. And how do you allow your voice to be unique and not a symbol of other women so that other women have the opportunity to bring their authentic selves when they come in the room, oh, she's already spoken for us? No. We have unique qualities that have to be heard. And it really is, I think, a question of the leadership at the organization taking a stand and taking the lead in being sure that those that are sitting at the table are indeed heard wherever they come from with their unique experiences. I love that you brought up the aspect of leadership because one of the things that we are constantly thinking about at our organization, our mission is to not just help people attain positions that are of note at their particular corporation. It is to help them progress to the point of senior leadership. And what we constantly talk about is that it's not just a pipeline issue. It is, to what extent can you bring them into the organization, train them, involve them, create a sense of belonging, and ideally retain them to such an extent that they want to stay mature, grow, and eventually be a senior leader. Now, there's also a different component. And it is helping organizations understand that it is not just a philanthropic effort to bring in more women. That is not the end goal. Having a diverse workforce is actually a business imperative. It makes your organization stronger. It makes it more nimble. It makes them better able to serve their entire customer base. And last time I checked, women represented half of the population. So if you don't have a decent number of them, if not a critical number of them, giving input to what you create, how you serve, and how you lead, then more than likely your organization is not being responsive to that of its core group. Well, and I know sometimes women's leadership styles tend to be a little different than men. How do these organizations then make space for that kind of leadership style? Because I think that that's something that ultimately helps the organizations be stronger. Absolutely. One of the things that you can think about as an organization is if you were trying to bring in and to make your organization much more receptive and much more collegial to a diverse group of people, first and foremost is to, one, start with a couple. You said, start with the top. Sometimes to get things going, you need to bring in someone at the top that sets the tone that showcases to other people it is okay to come into work and not to be dressed the same as the men, to conduct a meeting in which listening is more emphasized than expressing one's opinion, where it is okay to share your comments at the end, as opposed to having to constantly jump in and lead from the outset, where there is a sense of comfort and how you develop teams and how people contribute. And when people see that at the top, then it's more comfortable at the vice president level, at the director level, at the managerial level, and yes, at the associate level, for someone to come in and say, women like me and how I engage in business are not just accepted, but celebrated and respected and listened to. And I think that's critical. I think in addition, it's the recognition that it's not just women, it is each person is an individual and they bring different screens, different experiences, and that diversity requires us to listen to each of those at the place that it comes in. So that both of us are, all of us are women, and the fact that we are does not mean that each of us are going to have the same style. Rather, each of us have unique personalities, and how do you create the space in your workplace that allows for each of those different perspectives to come in, be heard, and make a contribution. I think there was a, I just saw an email recently on a Mackenzie study that talks about the bottom line contribution in organizations in which women have a dominant place, and not in the sense of pure numbers, but in which they are at various levels of leadership, and that those styles become part of the fabric and culture of the organization. And at that stage, it hits the bottom line because when that happens, I think that there's, as you said, the listening, the sort of understanding, the drawing in that I think is women's leadership style, that sort of characterizes women's leadership style. When that happens, then it brings everybody into the table so that those that are older feel that they have a place. Those that are very junior feel that they have a place. There has to be this mutual contribution to the end product as opposed to I'm female, I'm young, I'm old. It really has to be an environment that is inherently inclusive. And again, that comes from leadership as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, absolutely. Deli, do you have another question? Oh, we certainly do. Okay, so hello. I'm Sumati Varma from Delhi University, and I'm a researcher in entrepreneurship, specifically in international entrepreneurship. So I have a couple of related queries. The first is that in the context of the information technology sector, I find absolutely no CEOs at the top. So no entrepreneurs who have led global startups in information technology in the Indian context, which is a very startling sort of finding for us. And linked with that is another issue about if we could somehow, which we somewhat got addressed right now, but I'd like to hear a little bit more if there is some insight on that, is that if we could somehow link up, you know, diversity with profitability of the company and things like that, that might help or encourage women to take on those roles or for the firms or companies to accept them in those roles and act as factors that encourage them to come up. So that is that's something that I'd be interested in hearing a little bit about. Okay, so you're saying that that in India, you're finding that there are no women who are in the highest levels of leadership in the companies, and what can be done to sort of increase that and to show the connection with profitability category of companies, of course, I mean, I'm talking of, you know, what we call the startups at a global level. So I'm not talking of women entrepreneurs at the national level. I'm talking of them at the international level, the ones who enable the startups to happen. So I find that there aren't any women in those roles in the, you know, from the IT sector in India. Okay, so can you give us an idea of what you think would would help with sort of increasing the number of women who are being involved in startups, particularly in the IT world? And how do we encourage women to become more involved in that? How do we show that their connections between women in positions of leadership and profitability of a country? Because I think that's sort of a bottom line for a lot of people, no pun intended. You know, for me, it is the research is out there. The McKenzie study, I think Pew had done one, Harvard. So the data is there that says that your bottom line increases when you have sufficient representation of women. So that I don't think the issue is the research. I think the issue is rather internalizing that research and understanding that as hard as it may very well be at the initial stages to draw women in, whether it be at the PE firms or whether it be at the funding institutions or those that are reviewing, that if you don't have those that are screening and drawing people in, then it makes it very difficult for you to grow the pool because the people that you're looking to bring into that industry as a startup or I don't know IT. I do know the financial services sector, but if the people that are coming in don't look like you, then there's a natural tendency for you to almost prescreen them out. So unless you have women in the PEs, women in IT, women that are doing the screening, then they're not going to see the candidates coming in, the startups coming in in the same way. So I think it's a combination of raising the insight from that research so that those that are on the panel indeed look like the candidates that are in front of them. And I know with women in the workplace, it took a while for people to shift the panel. I remember times when I was one of the only women in an organization and I'd be on every single senior interviewing panel because they needed somebody that looked like the rest. I don't mind serving that role and I think women in IT have to sort of raise their hand and say, I'll step forward and play that role of screener until we get a pool large enough so that entrepreneurs in the IT space feel like they're talking to somebody that looks like them. I want to call out on more on the entrepreneurial side. So Michelle mentioned that the outset that I was featured on ABC's Shark Tank here in the United States back in November 2015. And in the lead up to that experience, we did a tremendous amount of research. We literally purchased Seasons 3 through 6 of Shark Tank and watched every single segment. We analyzed every single group that went on there, their demographic breakdown, what they were pitching, how much they were asking for, the rebuttals they received, how they engaged with the sharks and ultimately what was the relationship with the sharks if they took a deal. And what came to our attention was that there was an outside group who recognized that Shark Tank had the platform and the popularity to change the conversation about gender and demographics in general when it came to VCs and how they perceived different entrepreneurs when they go in front of them. So they aggregated all the data on who had gone on the show, what their demographic makeup was, what deal they received, what shark they took, and they presented it to the sharks. And what was fascinating was that in the case of all of them, except for one, the women had made more money for the sharks than the males. So by the time I got on to the show, and we were filming in June of 2015, Kevin O'Leary, who is actually Mr. Wonderful, Mr. Wonderful, the bald guy, he flat out said during our segment when they realized that I was the CEO, he said, oh, I love that women make me more money. And it was one of the first times where he articulated that out to the audience. So it then prompted other VCs and other PE firms to start to look at their portfolios and say, let's push the numbers not on all these other different factors, but are we perhaps having a blind spot because we're looking for people who look like us engaging in that homophily where you want people around you who remind you of yourself. They said, let's start to look at the hard numbers here. Is the bottom line working for us? So I would say if you're particularly for your particular industry or if it's your particular country, to potentially work with an outside group to aggregate that research to help fundamentally change mindsets, because it wasn't until those numbers were in front of him that he projected that out and it started to percolate in the downstream to other people to look at that. I think that was a fundamental shift that has started to change the conversation. And then on a personal note, I am part of a group of women. We call ourselves visible figures. And it's a playoff of the movie that came out a couple years ago called Hidden Figures. And how women in IT, particularly STEM, were not recognized or even acknowledged for their work. And so he said, let's get together for those of us who have created some sort of IT related products and mine had a patent on it. So they included me. That was nice of them. But from a visible figures group standpoint, we said, there are 50 of us. And eventually one of us is going to meet a BC or supportive group of financiers who recognize the value that we bring to the table and is willing to invest in women. And if we don't compete with one another, and instead we help to amplify each other's research and meetings and connections, we can help move the ball forward. So if they go to a meeting with a particular group of BCs and they find that they are receptive, ask great questions, don't come in and talk about risk with women as opposed to talking about the potential and the growth, then they say, hi, so the other 49 of you, here's a BC that you should consider. And they have their room to take on more businesses. So I would say it's one, pushing for the research that changes the conversation, and two, building a community of people who are sharing and frankly championing those who are receptive to the work you want to do and want women in leadership roles at entrepreneurial ventures. Thank you. Now let's take some questions from the comments sections or those following along on Twitter using the hashtag GES 2017. Okay, so one of our online questions is, how do you facilitate a positive work environment that attracts and retains talent? That's an excellent question. Oh, I get this one. Okay. I believe it too. You can fight for it. In my experience, I've worked in government, I've worked in the social sector, I've worked in the private sector, and it gets back to leadership every single time. It gets back to the leaders that find women that they think will not only progress and make contribution in their particular area, but that can actually have this ripple effect within the organization and positioning them so that those that are naturally resistant to having women in their environment can see that there is indeed a contribution. And it's positioning them strategically in the organization so that they can have bottom line contributions. Because however much we say the social sector is not bottom line oriented, it is. Oh, it totally is. Government, it is. And so it is, you're fighting for budget, you're fighting for donors. If you can position women with leadership articulating that bottom line impact, it increases the likelihood that you're going to be able to get traction. And then it's drawing women in and creating cohorts or environments in which they feel comfortable and can make their best contributions. So I really do think that it gets back to leadership. Yeah, and I think that research is so important to be able to use that, to have your leadership pointing that out. And I think about that. If you listen to advertising today, you'll notice that most of the voices are women's voices in advertising. And that's when I was in journalism school a million years ago, they did a study and they found that women's voices are more persuasive than men's. And that's a bottom line issue when you're an advertiser. Did you have a comment on that? I'm simply going to underscore what you said. I'm sure we all are very familiar with this quote, be the change you want to see in the world. Yes. You have to reflect the environment that you want. And I think it starts with you. And so hopefully if you've been brought into an organization that is trying to elevate and champion other women, you yourself can help to facilitate that. I personally go out of my way and meetings to reinforce and to acknowledge what I have just heard, particularly if it comes from another woman or another woman of color. If there are projects in which I think they're a stretch and that someone maybe only has 50% of the background experience that requires it, but I think it's someone who has the competency and the interest of doing so. I will push forward names and include a mixture of women and advocate on their behalf. And so I think that... You're helping them lean in. I try. I try. So one of the best things that you can do is to not just to do that yourself, but to bring in other people who are willing to go that extra mile to do that as well. Because the collective effort will mean that those voices are heard and that they are included. Which to me, I think someone brought up much earlier, it's just not about the numbers. It's about inclusion in a sense of belonging. Okay. Our next question is, have you found any advantages to being a woman in business? And I'm going to start with you this time. Advantages to being a woman? Yes. The products that I pitched on Shark Tank was one in which we were untrinking wool or cashmere sweaters that shrink in the dryer. And interestingly enough, when we were first starting, the assumption in the United States was that the majority of the people doing laundry were women. So early on, whenever we were pitching our product, they wanted to push forward me because they said, oh, it'll appeal to the women. Let's have the female entrepreneur because they were two co-founders, one of whom was a male. They always wanted me to be front and center. And so for my personal brand, it helped out quite a bit because they always wanted to push me. But what I was able to do from that was to actually, I would say, affect perceptions because we did a bunch of research on who was actively doing laundry in the household. And it was not just our external research, but also the consumers who were buying our product. And it was 45% male. And so because I was a female coming with authenticity about, quote, my space in the home, I could say, no, actually, we've seen the hard data both with our partners as well as with our consumer base to see that there is a fundamental shift in behavior in the home. And there is more dual partnerships with people during laundry. And so it actually not just helped us promote our product, but I was able to do a bunch of a series of conversations and interviews in which I was able to speak to that shift in the household from a entrepreneurial perspective. I think for me it is in a lot of instances, you're one of the few in the room. And so you naturally have a platform and a spotlight. And so it's a question of using that to your point to, in essence, raise the data, the insight that you have that better positions other women so that they have their opportunity to have the seat at the table. Cal from Burundi in Africa asks, what are the panelists doing to raise another generation of women entrepreneurship, especially young ones? I'll take that because you teamed it up so beautifully for me. So one of the things I wanted to do once I had attained that success on Shark Tank and was able to put my product into distribution was to make sure that there were other women behind me who could build off of the knowledge and the experiences that I had. So in my role at MLT, there are about 450 entrepreneurs over half of which are women. And what we try to do is to have both in person online seminars in which we are guiding them on how is the best way to create a business plan? How do you affect a little pitch to people who probably do not look like you? What are some of the things that you have to think about and how you position your product in light of the fact that more often than not, no one is coming with an original idea. And so how is it from a team perspective or an execution perspective that you are going to differentiate yourself? One of the things that I care most about is making sure that if you have individual success as an entrepreneur that that knowledge, that kernel of potential is not kept to just you. And so in my position I am constantly trying to simply amplify the work that I have done across the nation. And even we have a few people in the Middle East and in Europe to make sure that that resonates and is captured by other people. Our alumni base ranges from early 20s all the way to their early 40s. And so for the majority of people it's something that that share of knowledge is helping that collective group of women move forward. I think for me it's been a question of mentorship. In a lot of instances there were very few of us. We formed cohorts and then went looking for other women that we could draw into our organizations. What I'm finding now as an older entrepreneur that is in which there is an assumption that if you say entrepreneur that they are of a certain age and being outside of that range, I'm coming back in and looking for mentorship from the younger folks. So I understand how do you draw young people in but also how do you draw a diverse group of people into entrepreneurship including those that have for whom this is a second and third career. And here I think the younger folks can mentor because it's a skill set that has been sort of breading the bone for you whereas it wasn't. You followed a traditional sort of pattern. So to the older women entrepreneurs, to the older women in the audience, this doesn't have to be a young person's sort of purview. This is one in which if you open yourself up to being mentored by those that are younger you have the opportunity to have a third and fourth career. I love that idea. Embassy Monrovia asks is it a good idea to start a business with credit or should you only use credit to scale your business? I'm going to turn it to you. I have a strong opinion. So the latter. So often I did a series of accelerators. I went to Harvard Business School and there was the Harvard Innovation Lab. There was Mass Challenge out of Boston. There were a series of different organizations that were trying to help move the needle on entrepreneurs and specifically in the Boston community move forward. And I saw a bunch of companies who believed they had a strong idea who took out credit to build out that idea and then finally released it into the marketplace whether it was for other businesses or for customers only to discover that there was some fundamental issue with how it was executed or the user experience or the time it would take to actually bring on that first business client. A lot of people underestimate the life cycle and selling into businesses. It was going to be too long and then they'd need another round of credit. And so I strongly encourage people to try to be either revenue first and or to actually test out the product first. Put it in the hands of people. Take the 80-20 rule. You don't need all that money up front to understand if your product resonates with people, if they would like to use it, the frequency of use, how they're going to use it. You need to answer those questions first before you go and take out a lot of money and then discover this is not working and I need to pivot and or I need to close down. So I strongly encourage people to actually test, test, test and do that as best possible with the finances that you have available to you. Use your family and friends for those of us who don't actually have that social safety net and you don't have family and friends. Siphon off some of the money that you have from your current job. Be as proactive as possible with keeping that in-house. And what that helps people prove is one, do I care enough about this to go forward? Because if someone's not giving you money and you have to sacrifice in some manner to make it happen, then you're actually going to prove to yourself I care enough about this to actually to do it. And then if I am putting in front of the a desired customer base and seeing that it's resonating, then I should actually go out to other people and ask for their money. I'm really glad you answered that question because it's something that I think is it is very popular right now and there's a lot of money, a lot of money that is being offered to people to start their businesses and it comes with a lot of constraints or those people want to have a definitive say on what you're doing. So it's best possible, stay in house, work with yourself, improve the worth of whatever you want you want to pursue. I think that approach would probably appeal more to millennials who tend to want to be debt-free. Yes, yes. I will defer to Deseret because we are at the friends and family early seed sort of stage and so I will wholly defer to her and in fact talk to her offline so that I can... I'm learning. Making connections already. That's right, that's right. Okay so before we go back to India for some more questions I'd like to report the responses to our live poll question here on Facebook. We asked what is the greatest challenge women entrepreneurs face. Here are the top results on the screen. The top answer was negative stereotypes followed by lack of financing and then educational restrictions. Audrey and Deseret, what are your reactions to those answers? When I see the negative stereotypes it hurts but I understand and I know that it's a reality and all I can say is it is the two things that have gotten me through are the passion for what I do and the persistence, that knowledge that if I just keep taking one more step toward the goal that ultimately it's going to get there and it's overcoming negative stereotypes with superior work and superior work product and that comes from that passion. It's anything less than 200% is something that is suboptimal and just having that bread into your psyche. It's painful that it still exists being a woman is not viewed as an attribute but rather as something that is an impediment but it's a reality and I think that it really does require women to pull together to support each other both in sort of that protective shield but that allows you to continue but also in helping to sort of move through and shift the stereotypes because you have the data from a cohort that says that is not indeed reality. Do you believe that old saying that women have to be twice as good to be considered half as good as a man? Unfortunately yeah and in heels dancing backwards. Dancing backwards in heels yeah. And we've proven that we can do it. I want to speak to the second item they said the lack of financing because they just spoke about not taking it. I want to clarify this because what I want to encourage is that someone take the minimal viable product, test it out, make sure it resonates with your question base and that it's worth the pursuit. That shouldn't take that long though. Once you have established that that I don't want people to hesitate to put themselves out there to ask for money. I will never forget when we launched our product we had only been selling for maybe six months we had only sold about 5,000 bottles and I decided over spring break at Harvard Business School that I was going to apply to Shark Tank and a bunch of people mainly mail told me oh it's too early your product isn't big enough you haven't sold enough you don't have a wide enough customer base. Shark Tank is huge now you can never get on the show and if you did they would eat you alive and they would never give you a deal. And I said well I think I have a compelling product with mass appeal. 5,000 bottles is enough in six months to say that we have actually proved that people want to try it or looking to use it and that there's a base here. I'm going to simply apply and we'll see what happens. The worst thing that can happen when you submit your proposal or or give your business plan to someone and say let's consider this is that they say no. So we applied I'm not joking a week later we received a call from the studio saying that they wanted to consider us and in between that period and actually going on Shark Tank we went on several different pitch competitions where no one considered us too early. So once you have established that it's something worth pursuing I encourage women to not feel as though there's some artificial bar that we have to supersede in comparison to men. A lot of men feel if I have a strong product and a decent team and I've had some traction it's time to get in front of investors. If you're at that point put yourself out there reach out to other people who have found receptive investors and start asking for money. So you felt like people were giving you that obviously bad advice because you were a woman entrepreneur? I think it was a combination that we were one a dual consumer consumer engineering product because it's a chemical product that untrinks clothing. But yes also that I was a female there have been countless people who have asked for money with nothing but a mock-up of their mobile app and said you know this is how it's going to work and we have tested it out with a bit of research and we have you know top two box in our research saying that 55 percent of people find this to be the next best mobile app that they would download. Once you have proven that it resonates with your custom base you have showcased that there is demand start moving towards financing. More often than not I just see that women have waited too long and then they've run out of that family and friends money and or they feel as though the market has proven to them that there is not interest and it's simply because they haven't put themselves out there yet. All right let's go back to our viewing group in India. Deli do you have two more questions for the panel? Yeah hi this is Anju Makin from Alchemy Corporate Communications. Thank you so much for being available at such a 4.35 a.m. in the morning. It's not quite that early but it's quite sad. I wanted to ask you know there is a securities and exchange board of India which mandates that every Indian listed company needs to have a professionally competent woman on the board as an independent director. However that's the catch. The Indian companies have staffed the board with their family members who may or may not be professionally competent. So is this a situation that you have faced in the U.S. and if yes so what have you done about it? Well before we answer the question let me ask you back. Is there any means by which they determine what professionally competent means? Educational qualifications and experience. Okay yeah so let me be the question for you. So basically she's saying that in India the Security Exchange Commission there has a rule that each company must have a professionally qualified professionally competent woman on their board but that and yeah interesting but that what people have done to sort of get around that is put family members on there. She's asking whether or not this is anything that we have faced here. Can I make a correction there? Sure. I have just been told that the SEBI has mandated it has to be a woman member. There are no qualifications attached to it. Oh that's why. That is the reason probably. I've worked with with family organizations before and there are normally several members of the family on the board and as they move to professionalize the organization they move to professional management trying to draw those members off the board and replace them with outside members is sometimes difficult. I think that it's a again it's a it's a question of one the leadership sort of understanding that we're in a different stage of development within the organization. I think that here it because they're putting family members in there isn't that recognition and that makes it especially especially difficult. Short of having change in the legislation it might be hard to to sort of impose unless there are other members of the board that then start saying well let's start to to have other qualifications like education like business experience sort of integrated in so either it's a legislative or a bylaw sort of sort of of issue but it's a difficult that's a difficult question. So when you ask that question I was thinking about the the separation in investors so for many angel investors what I found were that they were people who were independently wealthy who wanted to who saw promise in your business and wanted to give back money and more often than not the angel investor groups were very family driven it was a husband and wife and or a family that was investing funds at the VC level the familial relations dropped and you started to see a bunch of organizations that had come together pulled money from from outside sources and they certainly did not have anyone that was making decisions and or choosing companies based off of family relations and so I honestly think as that we were going through our fundraising rounds that I saw pros and cons there so with the family it was actually easier to do more research on what is it that most resonates to them who have they who have they invested in before if I can't connect with the husband then perhaps I can connect with the wife or vice versa it was a bit easier to to capture what is it how do we position ourselves for them and make this a product and company and team of appeal for the vcs because they had eliminated that x factor it was much more about what are the numbers what are the growth opportunities how are you expanding you know is the team staying on past a certain date what does the cap table look like it was it was a much different experience and so I would say that I I almost don't want to change the dynamic I actually liked the fact that there were two different streams and that for some of these for some of these organizations you did have that family dynamic at play that you could frankly take advantage of and work to you and work to your own needs and then if if that wasn't working and or if there weren't certain let me say that assisted you that you could look to the vcs now if they're wanting us to okay deli do you have another question yes my name is Anshama I'm a student at the university so being a student I would like to know that what are the financial and mentorship programs and opportunities that are available there for students young students to get up their business start up and running okay so he's asking about financial and mentorship opportunities for students to get their businesses up and running in the United States in the United States or abroad in the US or abroad yeah in the US in the US okay so you are coming to school at the absolute best time because I cannot think of a top public or private institution that at this point has not endowed and supported the full growth of an innovation lab at their university at my alma mater university of Virginia they have a huge innovation lab that they just built in the past five years Harvard has the same I cannot think of a single school that does not have one and what they have done is created an ecosystem in which you have entrepreneurs vcs angels in the area that are coming in and providing guidance they bring in free legal advice they bring in accountants to help help you work through your initial taxes they have you working in the same workspace as other entrepreneurs you can ask similar questions that's actually how I found my packaging vendor and my in fulfillment supplier was working right next to another team that had a consumer goods product so that's one one option is to go to whatever key university in which you are associated and take full advantage of the entrepreneurial efforts that they have running there there's also a major organization who would kill me if I didn't mention them because they supported me for a full year but out of Boston there is an international accelerator called math challenge that has teams from all over the world they take a full 100 after the application process bring you in for a four month period in which they give you all the space the mentorship the pitching guidance access to vcs access to companies you might want to do a joint partnership or excuse me joint venture and or to purchase your company to help accelerate you between May and August towards where your your particular company might want to go and so I got an opportunity to meet companies that were doing transformational work in other countries particularly when it came to health and to food as well as a lot of people who were based in the United States who were trying to move the needle forward on some really pressing health issues for our population it is by far one of the biggest and most well known accelerators so and has a global presence with offices abroad so if you're looking for a more intense acceleration experience you could look at that there's out of DC because I can't forget our home city there is 1776 which also does very similar work and is has more of an emphasis on social impact and philanthropic efforts all right we're running really short on time deli do you have a final question yeah hi i'm surika my question to you is that if you have a complete women entrepreneurship team how easy or how difficult is it to raise the finances okay so if you have a fully female team how hard is it to raise that so i skirt because i know we're running out because i want to do the one trying to get to some of the online questions i would say it depends on what your your product or service is if the female team help helps establish the authenticity of why you're pitching it then i have found that it actually goes much faster if it is something in which for whatever reason there is and i think this is unfair but there is dissonance so it's a field or it's a type of product service that people do not associate with women then you have to work a little bit harder to get the consideration and to receive the money but if it's in your quote female wheel wheelhouse and you have three of you who are doing it who are powerhouses they're going to say oh let's please come on in okay i think we have some uh online questions uh from viewers um they're asking us to keep the answers brief a question from the american corner in candy Sri Lanka how can large businesses support smaller grassroots entrepreneurs i'll be quick they can give them office space so often uh people are wasting money not having uh office space and in our own organization which is in that large we reserve two to three rooms for entrepreneurs to come in at any point during the week and to use that space to take business meetings or to make phone calls uh and that's a small way that large corporations can help reduce the friction for for new entrepreneurs we have a relationship with a large company um and they've allowed us some of their developers to look at some of the things that we're developing and just give us insight on how we might might go so it's sort of an IT mentorship okay um Mahila asks how can women with limited financial resources achieve entrepreneurial success how can women with good ideas but limited resources make entrepreneurship work test quickly and then start putting yourself out there with the organizations that are looking for the type of product or service that you have to offer whether that's an accelerator and or with angel angel investment groups i'll leave it there okay i'd like to take this opportunity to discuss another aspect of diversity within entrepreneurship how can ethnic and religious minorities lgbti identifying individuals people with disabilities and other marginalized groups uh have more of a level playing field when it comes to launching a business or contributing their talents at two companies that would benefit from them the only experience that i've had in this area is um some work that i've been doing with tribal communities in jharkhand india um and there um it was um actually uh having folks um work with folks in the uh in in the cities um to increase the marketing and visibility of some of the products that they have and and providing marketing uh access but uh i i think it's really more a question of of sort of the exposure um yeah i'll leave it to that okay all right so it looks like we are almost out of time um adrian desirate would you like to share any final thoughts i'll let you go for it i would say for those who are looking to pursue an entrepreneurial adventure that you will hear a lot of noise as to why you shouldn't if there was anything that i heard in the first month the first year of my my product it was no one will use that how does that work you don't have a chemical engineering background who would buy this do people actually want to use it often you're not you haven't sold enough to actually persist uh to other people and i would tell you that you're gonna it's helpful to listen when people want to give constructive guidance on how to move things forward but if you want to pursue something you have to have an inner confidence that the time and effort that you're putting forth to whatever you're doing is worth it and you need to siphon off the good feedback versus those that are simply trying to uh drop negative negative feelings around to you so so just have total vision on what you would like to do and don't get so sidetracked and what other people are saying because ultimately the only the only people are close to what you're doing are you and your co-founders no one else knows what you're how hard you're working what you're doing to to find the next customer and to bring in more money so they haven't seen anything until you until you've made it and i can't tell you how many people who were very negative about our product until we had one to deal with mark cuban on a shark tank and take us home for me it's a question of passion persistence and people and and being sure the passion's going to keep you you know the inner drive but surrounding yourself with with people that both support you but also that can mentor you and help contribute to the bottom bottom line is is critical okay um thank you to our panelists including rahama who did a wonderful job answering uh viewers questions and providing links and resources here on facebook um a special thanks to the audience and organizers at embassy in new deli india and thank you to all of our online viewers including those watching with viewing groups across the world at embassy manrovia liberia american corner pretoria south africa american corner bujambura and burundi american corner uh come in come in jay in burundi um information resource center in kegali rwanda american corner columbus shrillanka and the american corner and candy shrillanka to continue the conversation please follow us on facebook and twitter at state drl and hashtag ges 2017 and stay tuned for a follow-up web chat in december i guess i'll be doing that too to discuss outcomes of the global entrepreneur summit in hyderabad india thanks again for joining us and have a wonderful day