Jennifer Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman grew their company, Rent the Runway, from an idea in 2008 to a company with 5 million members by 2015. But there were multiple stops along the way where they needed a push to envision how big the couture-rental company could eventually be.
"It took a lot of mentorship, advisors and partners each step as we grew Rent the Runway," Fleiss said. "Those are moments when you really do need to lean on people to dream big enough."
Now, Fleiss and Hyman want to give others the same boost that they received. Rent the Runway's new foundation is partnering with
Fleiss, Hyman and their partners at UBS see a need: One-third of U.S. businesses are owned by women, but among high-growth firms, less than 10% of founders are women, according to a 2014 Kauffman Foundation report. "When we looked at the landscape of women-owned companies and women founders, we loved the fact that the passion is there, but they're actually missing from big, scalable, high-impact businesses," said Lori Feinsilver, UBS Americas' head of community affairs.
Project Entrepreneur will be a business competition where teams with a female founder that have raised less than $100,000 in institutional funding can apply online starting Tuesday through January 8, 2016. The top 200 companies will be invited to a two-day New York City-based bootcamp that will end with about 20 companies pitching to investors. Three teams will win a grand prize of $10,000 and the option to set up shop inside Rent the Runway's offices for a five-week accelerator program.
Rent the Runway cofounders Hyman and Fleiss (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images for Rent The Runway)
Fleiss said that women leading companies, especially at the early stages, can be less likely than their male counterparts to envision -- and pitch -- sky-high futures for their startups. "Women are often very realistic and incredibly grounded when they're projecting out the financials of their company -- trying to make it based on hard-core data they feel confident they can deliver on," Fleiss said. "Men have more of a 'fail gene' when they're going to go to the moon and back." That difference in risk-taking can lead women to raise less venture capital, especially if firms have mostly male partners. (And it's all exacerbated by the fact that investors prefer the pitches of handsome men, research shows.)
Rent the Runway's founders wanted to create the program because customers kept telling the company that they saw its brand as representing female entrepreneurship, Fleiss said. UBS also has its own philanthropic program to help entrepreneurs and is providing financial support for the competition for three years.
"We made a lot of progress in the number of women pitching to venture capitalists and starting companies," Fleiss said. "We want to make sure we layer on top of that the scalable component because that area is still struggling. It's instrumental in making sure you think large enough about your idea and push the boundaries of, 'How big can this really be?'"
