Rethinking How Women Build Businesses

The partners who built the Ladies Who Launch networking group explain how they support female entrepreneurship and connect like-minded women

by Stacy Perman

Victoria Colligan, a former corporate lawyer and one-time executive at high-end wedding gown designer Amsale, and Beth Schoenfeldt, the founder of Learning Solutions Company, a specialized solutions firm for companies, had long recognized that females approached business differently from their male counterparts. And they knew that women were increasingly making up the ranks of entrepreneurs across the country (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/15/07, "She Did It Her Way"). So four years ago the pair used their experience and connections to establish Ladies Who Launch, a national for-profit networking group for women entrepreneurs.

Today, the business is a combination of an online social networking group and an offline support system of local incubators connecting budding and established entrepreneurs, as well as a mix of writers, artists, freelancers, and others across multiple industries. With 40,000 online members, 45 incubators across the country, and an additional five set to launch by the end of 2007, business is booming.

Recently, BusinessWeek.com staff writer Stacy Perman spoke with Colligan and Schoenfeldt, who recently published Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle (St. Martin's, May, 2007) about their unique approach to entrepreneurship and connecting like-minded businesswomen. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

What is the purpose of Ladies Who Launch?

Colligan: Our entire mission has been to give women better P.R., marketing, exposure, and distribution for their products and services. If you join our online program you can post in our classified lists, sell in our eBay (EBAY) store, connect to other women for referrals, and find a lawyer or even an acupuncturist. Oftentimes women find business partners through Ladies Who Launch and new clients and customers. The women connect locally through the incubators and worldwide to other incubator members.

You talk about the "feminine approach" to launching a business. What is it?

Schoenfeldt: Women launch their businesses in different ways and for different reasons than men. [We've] found that the No. 1 reason women launch a business is for lifestyle, meaning they want more freedom, flexibility, and control. That has implications in how they grow their business.

For example, they manage growth so that they have more freedom, work three to four days a week, or choose not to have employees added to their responsibility of having a family at home. Or they might not borrow a large amount of money and instead grow their business slowly and organically—in many cases, on purpose.

What are some of the things women who join Ladies Who Launch incubators are hoping to gain?

Schoenfeldt: These are women at any level of business, from those owning multimillion-dollar companies to those with just a seed of an idea. We mix them all together. The goal for all of them is to move something forward.

What makes us different is that we create an environment where we mix these women together. We think that's where creativity comes from. If you are in an industry and only hang around people in that industry, it can limit your creativity.

You write that Ladies Who Launch is about breaking free of the traditional model of entrepreneurship and business—how so?

Schoenfeldt: We both have our MBAs, and when you talk about entrepreneurship there is [usually] one way to start a business: Start with a business plan and raise money. It's a very structured approach. We talk about just starting and proving the concept first.

Women often start their businesses without a plan. Women are good at bootstrapping and figuring it out as they go along.