Women Finally Helping Women?

By Giadha Aguirre De Carcer

A generational transformation is definitely taking place in terms of women networking.  I remember when being a young woman in the financial sector, especially in Manhattan, was an oddity at best, and if your boss was a woman, as was mine, you were more likely to get additional scrutiny than help. Women were too busy surviving to have time to help the few others around.  Elas, in most cases, even if they did have time, they felt too threatened by a younger version of themselves to be inclined to do so.

In fact a particular anecdote comes to mind -

Poorly Researched Business Propositions Stick Out Like Sore Thumbs

While my goal is to have this blog be a forum to shed light onto less talked about topics specific to women entrepreneurs, topics that may still be considered tabooish and should probably be demystified, a few friends suggested I also post tid bits of advice to coach new entrepreneurs.  So here goes today's thought.

A couple of weeks ago, I witnessed how an investor was able to ask one single question to decide whether the business proposition he was hearing about was worth looking further into - just one question - "what is your market?"

When asked the presenter jumped to what I am sure he believed was the obvious answer and proudly quoted a multimillion dollar figure relevant to his overarching industry sector.  He quickly followed the figure with another figure, the percentage of said market he was going to capture to reach x revenue per year.  Unfortunately the presenter's answer, completely unbeknownst to him, was a clear indication to most people in the room that he had not done his homework and, as far as the investor was concerned, sealed his fate instantly.

Had the presenter done the required research he would have started by describing the market in qualitative terms and then explained how and why he had defined the market for his product or service.  Such an explanation would have substantiated whatever figure he followed with, which at the end of the day is relatively inconsequential given that, let's face it, figures are a dime a dozen (no pun intended) if you know how to use a spreadsheet.

The link below is an excellent overview of the basic research any entrepreneur should do to avoid this type of scenario.

How To Research Your Business Idea