Women start businesses at a rate of 1.5 times the national average, yet only 4 percent of female-owned companies generate more than $500,000 in annual revenues, according to the 2014 State of Women-Owned Businesses report.
Statistics such as these and anecdotal evidence that women lack the funds and confidence to “dream big,” led Jennifer Hyman and Jenny Fleiss, cofounders of Rent the Runway, and Lori Feinsilver, head of community affairs and executive communications, Americas at UBS, to launch Project Entrepreneur.
“We see women being a little conservative and timid,” Feinsilver said. “We want to encourage women to reach for the stars and go for game-changing concepts.”
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“We’ve always been encouraging of female entrepreneurs and always hoped to find the right way and moment to pay it forward,” Fleiss said. “Speaking to our customers, we realized that they identify RTR as a brand of female empowerment. We thought, here’s an opportunity to put more momentum and power behind that.”
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Project Entrepreneur is the first initiative of the newly launched Rent the Runway Foundation, whose mission is to inspire female entrepreneurs. It’s also a part of UBS Elevating Entrepreneurs, the financial company’s flagship philanthropic initiative in the space.
While any type of business is fair game, Fleiss said, “We’re focused on females going after large-scale visions.”
A five-step competition will culminate with three entrepreneurs being chosen to receive a cash prize of $10,000 each and a spot in a five-week accelerator program hosted at Rent the Runway.
Entrepreneurs who’ve raised less than $100,000 in venture capital can apply today online using an existing prototype or beta technology. The top 200 finalists will be invited to attend an entrepreneurship workshop weekend in New York in April, where they’ll receive targeted support for their companies. The field of applicants will be winnowed following the workshop to 20 entrepreneurs, who will then compete with a live pitch to decide the three winning concepts.
The program will offer a digital resource hub at projectentrepreneur.org that will include education modules, feature articles, blog posts and inspirational stories from established business women.
Project Entrepreneur in October and November will hold free educational summits in Manhattan; Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., where attendees will be able to workshop their ideas.
“We’ll be sharing news about Project Entrepreneur via e-mail with our list of 5 million members, and we’ll leverage the UBS network,” Fleiss said. “We’ll be leveraging social media, hoping it goes viral.”
“We have an opportunity to really build a stronger pipeline,” Feinsilver said. “This is so attractive to UBS because it’s addressing a gap in the marketplace. We’re hoping we can take this to the next level, especially for minority groups because they haven’t moved as much as we would like them to.”