If You're a Female Entrepreneur Trying to Raise Money, You Should be at UVU Tomorrow for the 7th Annual WeROC Conference ("Women Entrepreneurs Realizing Opportunities for Capital")

Fundraising Truism No. 1: Raising money is hard — really, really hard!

Fundraising Truism No. 2: Raising money (if you're a woman) is awful ... AND ... really, really hard!

How hard? According to data compiled by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,

"The 30-year average of all-female founders’ share of VC funding is 2.4%."

Stop and think about that for a moment: Two-point-four percent.

Yeah, that means that 97.6% of all venture capital funding goes to companies led by men. 🤯 🤯 🤯

The disparity is not only shocking; it's also appalling.

WeROC 2024: The Relevant Details

WeROC is an annual conference produced by Kinect Capital (the formerly named VentureCapital.org), an event designed specifically to assist female entrepreneurs interested in learning the ropes about raising outside capital for their companies.

An acronym that takes its name from the phrase "Women Entrepreneurs Realizing Opportunities for Capital," WeROC is now in its 7th year, and WeROC 2024 is being held tomorrow (Friday, 04 October 2024) in the Scott C. Keller Building on the campus of Utah Valley University, home of the Woodbury School of Business.

Although over 200 attendees had registered as of yesterday, Kinect Capital expects that final RSVPs will top out at close to 400 people.

So, click here to get tickets for yourself and/or your friends/colleagues (and to see a full agenda).

From my perspective, I'm especially interested in the following Agenda highlights.

• 9:30am — Keynote Address by Astrid S. Tuminez, Ph.D., UVU's President. (For those not familiar with President Tuminez, I've include a brief bio below*.)

• 10:30am to ~2pm — Brief investor pitches from 12 female executives looking to raise outside capital from investors, including two student entrepreneurs from UVU's WeLift Program (the entrepreneurship program for women at the University). {NOTE: There will be a lunch break roughly midway between this group of presentations.}
• ~2pm — A panel discussion on "Sources of Funding."
• ~3pm — A "Women at the Helm — Rockstars" panel discussion featuring several female execs who are, duh, quite successfully leading their own companies. {Sidenote: I'm particularly interested in this discussion as it will feature one of my newer friends, Alyssa McEwen, the CEO/Founder of Harmonious Capital Administration, a brilliant FinTech firm that recently closed on a $4.0 million Seed Round of external funding.}

Anyway ... if you're a female entrepreneur who is either

• Looking for external funding, or
• Is interested in learning more about raising money,

then you should be at UVU tomorrow for WeROC 2024.

And to be clear, that's also true for any individual or organization what supports female-led organizations.

So ... I'll be there.

And if you see me at UVU tomorrow, I hope you'll come by and say hello.

Thanks.

* — AUTHOR'S NOTE: For those who don't know President Tuminez (or her professional and personal background), she is a deep-thinking, articulate and personable genius in areas ranging from marketing to public policy and from higher education to democracy.

And she has led UVU to heights I suspect few expected were possible to achieve.

Raised in poverty in the the slums of the Philippines on the island of Iloilo, President Tuminez has gone on to earn a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University, a master's degree from Harvard, and a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

She is fluent in six languages — English, Russian, Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), French, Tagalog and Spanish — and her work has taken her around the globe, having worked for (or consulted with)

• Microsoft,
• AIG Global Investments,
• Carnegie Corporation of New York,
• The Council on Foreign Relations,
• The U.S. Institute for Peace, and
• The Bank of the Philippine Islands (the 2nd largest bank in the Philippines),

just to name a few.

An unabashed fanatic of all things UVU-related, President Tuminez is the first full-time female president of UVU, and she is also intensely supportive of all efforts to enroll students who are the first in their families to attend college.

And yes, I'm a big-time fanboy! 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️

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