Springboard launches women into their calling

WASHINGTON -- Amy Millman's biography reads like a textbook road map for a child of the 1960s. Hippie war protester. Loyal soldier in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Champion of businesses owned by women. Big Tobacco lobbyist.

Big Tobacco lobbyist?

Millman, now head of Springboard Enterprises, a non-profit that helps female entrepreneurs raise venture capital, matter-of-factly dismisses suggestions that her 10-year stint at Philip Morris might be seen as a betrayal of her idealistic roots. In fact, she says, all her jobs demanded the same skills: selling a message for her constituents and finding a way to meet the needs of disparate groups. Tobacco companies and members of Congress. Women and venture capital firms.

"It's about building relationships and trying to come to some common ground," Millman, 52, says in an interview in Springboard's cramped basement offices at George Washington University, where a Hillary Clinton cutout adorns her corkboard.

Millman's open-mindedness and eclectic resume have served her and Springboard well. Since she co-founded the group in 2000, Springboard has helped 347 female-owned businesses raise $3.7 billion in venture capital.

The group's mission is born of a glaring disparity. Women are majority owners of about 30% of U.S. businesses, says the Center for Women's Business Research. But they head just 3.75% of venture-capital-backed firms, down from 7.7% in 2002, says a Dow Jones VentureOne survey.

Part of the reason for the gap is simply the evolution of women in the workplace. It wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that a significant number became engineers, software programmers and scientists. In recent years, many of those professionals decided to launch tech-related ventures that required investments of $1 million or more.

The drop-off in women's share of venture capital since 2002 can partly be pinned on the dot-com bust, which affected women, many of whom own start-ups, more than men. After the bubble burst, "A lot of venture capital firms were not investing in early-stage companies," instead focusing on established firms, Millman says.

Another problem, she says, is that women are not plugged into male-dominated business networks. "If you don't hang out in the same circles and you didn't go to Stanford engineering school or Harvard, how do you meet people?"

So in 2000, a group of business officials who focus on women -- including Millman, who was then running the National Women's Business Council, an advisory group to President Clinton -- held a forum to connect female entrepreneurs to VCs. In one day, 27 women made pitches to about 350 investors at Oracle's Silicon Valley conference center.

Becoming president

Two more forums took place later that year. In 2001, Springboard Enterprises was hatched as an ongoing concern, and Millman became president. The group has held 16 forums nationwide, as well as seminars for female entrepreneurs.

About 30 presenters are screened from an applicant pool of about 300. Before the forum, they participate in a one-day boot camp and many weeks of coaching by two-person teams that typically include a lawyer and a tech executive or an accountant. Dry, rambling presentations are whipped into crisp, 10-minute pitches, called "elevator speeches."

"Business people are used to selling a product," Millman says. "The audience is interested in how you're going to make money."

Because many women aren't adept at self-promotion, they receive a crash course in chutzpah. "Most women don't ever talk about themselves," Millman says. "But investors are investing in you. They want to know you're the one who's going to make this happen."

About 45% of Springboard presenters have raised venture funds, and five have gone public. Alumni include iRobot, which makes a robot vacuum; MinuteClinic, a chain of retail-based health clinics recently bought by CVS; and Xenogen, a leading biotech firm acquired this year by Caliper Life Sciences.

Julie Hamrick, president of Ignite Financial, which makes customer-service software for banks, says she took a Springboard course after she had trouble raising venture capital to expand her sales force.

She didn't understand when investors spewed jargon such as "What's your burn rate?" (It's the amount of cash her company spent in excess of income.) Plus, she says, "They wouldn't take us seriously."

Springboard helped plug her into a network of investors who pumped $1 million into her firm, and honed her pitch. "I learned how to make a much clearer and more concise presentation and to convey the message with passion."

For VCs, Springboard offers a pipeline to the best prospects.

"It's great for us because what we're seeing is the cream of the crop," says Kylie Sachs, a principal of Ascend Venture Group, which has invested in two Springboard graduates.

The forums are run by local groups that pay Springboard a $50,000 licensing fee. Millman helps devise the curriculum, oversees the forums and makes contacts year-round between investors and entrepreneurs.

To manage the myriad moving parts, she deploys her knack for tapping into the needs of her audience. "When she's dealing with a woman entrepreneur who's having a difficult time, she's like a warm blanket," says Betsy Myers, a longtime colleague who is director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard. "With a VC, it's about presenting the facts and showing that women are a good business risk."

Voted 'most controversial'

Millman was raised in middle-class Baldwin, N.Y., by a stay-at-home mom and a salesman. During the Vietnam War, she became a tie-dye-shirt-wearing rebel. Millman was voted "most controversial" in high school. "I knew I wanted to do something politically."

Millman was set to attend law school here until a summer internship at a big law firm convinced her "it wasn't the lifestyle I wanted."

Instead, she got a master's in public administration and joined President Carter's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. When Carter lost the 1980 election, a headhunter proposed a lobbying job at Philip Morris, where her agenda featured a fight against an airplane smoking ban.

"I didn't smoke and wasn't really enamored of it, but it didn't bother me at all," she says. "It's how you keep your integrity and make sure people trust you."

After a brief stint as a lobbyist for truckers, she joined the women's business council, where she spearheaded rules making it easier for women to get small-business loans.

Although she downplays the differences between her jobs, colleagues cite her passion as Springboard's driving force. Millman concedes she's found her calling: "I'm building a farm team of successful, seasoned, savvy businesswomen. How cool is that?"

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