Penelope, please go back to giving good business advice, and spare us the sensationalism.

I began reading Penelope Trunk’s posts after I heard about her much-criticized tweet wherein she expressed her real-time relief that she was having a miscarriage. And though it is complicated, I understood her reasons for feeling that way when she wrote about the miscarriage and tweet at length in The Guardian. Trunk has often caused fury when her words have been taken out of context, but increasingly, the sensational quotes are an accurate barometer of her actual meaning. As a personal blogger, there is nothing wrong with this, but as a purported business expert, it’s disappointing that she often capitalizes on her substantial online presence to fan stereotypes and give irresponsible advice.

Inc. magazine calls Trunk “arguably the world’s most influential guidance counselor.” Trunk does have a refreshingly honest voice and not a small amount of bravery for writing so frankly about her sex life, her Asperger’s Syndrome and her work experiences. I enjoy her stories and her sometimes off-center personal musings. Heather Armstrong’s comedic and compelling voice on Dooce makes me laugh out loud for the same reasons. But, while levity makes career advice palatable, sensational post topics that, in turn, disparage women, encourage them to have plastic surgery or instruct them to use their twenties to find a husband and thirties to have children, are a very poor use of Trunk’s considerable influence.

I see some of my own work experiences mirrored in several of Trunk’s posts, like Why Problem Employees Don’t Get Fired and How to Use Cold Water as a Productivity Tool. I also learned a little from posts like 5 Things to Do When You’re Unemployed. Hint: It’s Not Job Hunting, How to Face Cash-flow Issues in a Start-Up, 7 Things to Consider Before Launching a Start-Up, and How to Get Good Ideas for Start-Ups.

These are helpful, relatable pieces. Are they link magnets? Perhaps not, but these show her human side and help people benefit from her experience. I like that she is unflinching when she talks about her own mistakes (lost an opportunity to write a column for Wired? Ouch!) and honest when she recounts her lessons learned. These are her strengths as a woman who gives advice on careers with some personal gems thrown in.

Unfortunately, she goes over the edge with posts like Why Women Should Lie Even More Than They Do, Forget the Job Hunt. Have a Baby Instead, How to Pick the People You Work With, and most recently, Male Founders: Want to Kill Your Start-Up’s Chances? Hire a Woman (which was subsequently renamed Are Start-ups Better as Single-Gender Affairs? Hat tip/Desiree Vargas Wrigley). In these pieces, Trunk is single-minded, imperative, and extremely biased.

As standalone posts, they do not support the image of Trunk as a business expert qualified to give advice to any generation of management, employees or job hunters. If I hadn’t read some of her other posts, these would have driven me away immediately. As well as earning her significant backlash from commenters and other bloggers, her BNET business expert colleagues also weighed in with their own disagreement with some of her views. Are opposing points of view, controversy and frank discussions good? Sometimes, but not at the expense of your credibility.

Why Women Should Lie Even More Than They Do. I cringed when Trunk advocated that prospective employees should lie about their height, age and previous salary in a job interview. What? When would I be asked about my height in a job interview, and how would I possibly lie about it? My age can be easily checked by the legal documents I need to supply to accept the job. Salary can also be verified, although I admit to a heavy bias against companies who demand to know your salary history and requirements as a condition of looking at your resume. Has Trunk never heard of background checks? Regardless, lying about these things can only bite you later, as Trunk’s BNET colleague Suzanne Lucas points out, as well as lose your coworkers’ trust and respect. I can see absolutely no benefit to taking that advice, and telling women to artificially inflate their previous salary “because the men do it.”

Forget the Job Hunt. Have a Baby Instead. Trunk also says that if you are unemployed, you might as well have a baby since you are out of the workplace anyway. Instead of spending time finding another job, then leaving to have a baby, just use that time you are already out of work. Of course this only works if you can afford to have said baby without the income you had before, you still have health insurance, and you actually want a baby right then. Having one out of “convenience” might not be the best idea. In addition, trying to find and then excel at a new job while taking care of a newborn can be difficult. Granted, you have an “excuse” to be out of work, which is another point I think she is making, but it’s a very questionable – not to mention impractical – course of action.

How to Pick the People You Work With. As a founder of a start-up, Trunk could certainly dictate who she works with, but her advice for choosing whom to work with includes: people who are attractive, but not more attractive than you (it’s important not to look ugly); women who are happy, but don’t smile too much; people who swear, but are not trashy; and people you admire. Also, you should not work with fat people because you’re likely to become fat, and fat people can’t think as clearly as thin people under pressure. And women, especially, (not men) should not be grouchy. I’m not sure what happened to simply choosing people who are qualified for the job. Maybe you need to be qualified, attractive (but not too), happy (but don’t smile), not grouchy, not fat, swear a little and be admirable.

As a mother, understandably Trunk devotes time to talking about children and career. Although fundamentally I agree with Trunk that relationships and family are important and careers can (ideally) be built at any stage of life, I don’t think women need to be told stridently and repeatedly, that there is a rigid schedule they need to adhere to (as she does here, here, here and here). Constantly stating that women should be married before thirty, and trying for children in their early thirties (because she says there is a high probability they will miscarry at least once) before hitting the dreaded thirty-five (after which she cites the even higher probability of having a special needs child) is not only inappropriate, but discounts women who do not want to be married and the growing number of women who do not want children at all. Trunk clings so narrowly to her own experiences and beliefs she can’t see or address other situations.

Male Founders: Want to Kill Your Start-Up’s Chances? Hire a Woman/Are Start-Ups Better as Single-Gender Affairs? This is the most recent post that sparked widespread rage amongst businesswomen. Trunk told male start-up founders that they absolutely should not “do a start-up with women” because diversity disrupted their focus and progress. As evidence, she cites an interview with one author and his one book, along with the fact that she, herself, was so emotional and difficult to work with, in order to state categorically that all women are liabilities during the high-pressure, early stages of a start-up.

But what about the many examples cited by her readers that she is wrong? Several wrote in that their start-ups benefited from having women in the group, and that qualifications are all that matter. Trunk herself was integral to starting three successful companies. Despite her self-admitted occasional outbursts and crying, she describes developing the start-up idea and securing funding at crucial points in the process, as well as putting in the time and effort to make Brazen Careerist successful.

If no start-ups included women at the beginning, or had women founders or co-founders, we would never have had these female-inspired companies or many others where women play an important role. If she is saying that women-run start-ups should only hire women, that goes against her advice to stay away from workplaces dominated by women, and that women should only run start-ups with men, although men shouldn’t run one with a woman. So where do women belong in the world of start-ups? Nowhere?

This is a huge opportunity (and a lot of respect) lost. Instead of calling out the fact that outbursts of any kind by either men or women aren’t appropriate (as Jessica Wakeman also points out), Trunk focuses on women as the problem. I have worked with many female and male managers with all kinds of temperaments – women who would never have an unprofessional outburst and men who acted like whining teenagers. Casting all women in the same emotional, unprofessional light while exempting men is nothing short of silly.

Trunk could have taken this opportunity to talk about where she went wrong and how others could learn from that, as she has done to better effect in other posts. To me, an “influential career guide” would not take this stance, fuel this stereotype and discourage women in this way. The saddest thing this post does, is to fan the flames of women’s insecurities and tell the rest of the world via hugely influential business and tech blogs that women don’t belong in start-ups.

Wrigley writes,

“As a 5 month pregnant CEO and co-founder of a funded start-up, I blew off her comments as inflammatory press intended simply to make me visit BNET. But … I realized that what Penelope has really done is simply put pen to paper for that little voice in the back of our mind (aka the Lizard Brain) that keeps us all from achieving our goals and our true purpose.

… The reality is that the journey of an entrepreneur is hard, it’s time consuming, it’s stressful, and it’s the most incredible experience of one’s life. It is the act of creating something out of nothing that provides value. Why would anyone deny women that opportunity? And why, Penelope, would you feed that little voice in people’s heads when it’s already so powerful?”

The idea that people might actually internalize and act on some of this advice in a time when jobs are hard to come by, when people need inspiration, and a person’s reputation in business is critical, is disturbing. It’s dangerous to hold Trunk up as a career guide when some of the advice she gives is not only irresponsible, but morally or legally questionable (lying in an interview, hiring people based on appearance). It all serves to undercut her legitimacy.

Perhaps I just prefer the infrequent, quieter, warmer posts (the post about how she mentors the two boys in her town who wanted to start a company is excellent). Or, perhaps I just don’t like to see a woman digging her own professional grave. Linkbait today, gone tomorrow.

Image: elliottng, eschipul

The post An Open Letter to Penelope Trunk. Sincerely, the Women appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveFollow the money – If you’re trying to understand why things happen the way they do, it’s as good a hint as you’re ever going to get. In the business investment world, where ideas are funded and smart minds turned loose, you can follow dollar trails upstream to venture capitalists and angel investors – and the values and ways of thinking that critically impact the American business landscape. What follows is the first in a series of articles examining equity investment’s relationship with businesses that have traditionally been out of its mainstream, including women-owned, green and long-term-growth-oriented.

Facts are indisputably facts. And the facts are that women make up a minute fraction of the venture capital and angel investment community, and that women entrepreneurs receive a tiny percentage of that community’s investment dollars. And while there are a lot of ways you can look at, explain or explain away these facts, one thing is certain: When you take half the population out of the give and take of this economic equation, society, the economy and yes, investors themselves, are going to lose out.

The numbers are truly staggering in a backwards-thinking kind of way. As of about two years ago, 10.1 million U.S. firms were owned by women (that’s more than half), employing more than 13 million people and generating $1.9 trillion in sales, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. Moreover, research has shown time and again that businesses with women at the helm, or at least with significant representation at the highest levels, consistently outperform significantly male-dominated organizations.

Now put on your cognitive dissonance hat and get this: According to Babson College research, only about 5 percent of all equity capital investments in the country go to businesses headed by women and just 3 percent get investments from venture capital.

While we do seem to live in era where working (and voting) against one’s own interest is as much of a rule and as an exception, investment communities have always done a pretty good job of watching (or at least scratching) their own backs.  So why are they shooting themselves and all the rest of us, while they’re at it, in the wallet?

Sharon Vosmek is the CEO of Astia. Founded in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the group is a not-for-profit organization that connects female entrepreneurs to investors, industry leaders, advisors and service providers. Despite Astia’s commitment to women, Vosmek points out that the role of the VC isn’t necessarily to support female entrepreneurs in the first place.

“I don’t see this as the work of VCs,” she says. “Their job is to make investments that return the best IRR [internal rate of return] to their LPs [limited partners].”

That said, however, she points out the business case for making such investments a priority: “What we know … is that companies that have women in executive leadership, outperform those that do not. Therefore, what we expect to see is a greater number and percentage of investments going into companies with women in those roles. Not because they need support, but because they outperform the market.”

So the question is begged: Why would a profit-oriented capital investment industry ignore such data? Is it about male bias against women? After all, 95 percent of VCs and 85 percent of angels are men.

Vosmek says there’s a problem with such a straightforward explanation: There just isn’t enough data to support the claim. Beyond the anecdotal, there’s just no information from “the inside” that shows a systemic anti-female approach to investment.

Fear, Not Loathing

There is, however, clear data about the power and impact of hidden bias and the fear of “the other” in the business world. The Level Playing Field Institute defines hidden biases as “perceptions, preferences, stereotyping of individuals or groups that often occur at the subconscious level… they may adversely impact our judgments and interactions with others and result in unfair behaviors. They become established and systemic in organizations and distort the playing field by conferring advantage for some and disadvantage for others.”

In a largely homogeneous world such as the VC and angel community and especially one dedicated to mitigating perceived risk though working with “known” quantities, the impact of this bias is bound to play itself out. So, in the end, what we might be seeing is less of a male versus female issue as much as one of same-sex cronyism and our preference for what Vosmek calls “all things like ourselves.”

“In our society, men and women are still by-and-large in separate business networks,” she explains. “VC and angel investment relies heavily on trusted business relationships; often for early stage investors, the only risk that can be mitigated is that of the individuals involved and if they are known to the investor. Trusted business relationships are always going to win in this scenario.

“You can see how within the high-growth space, groups who are not naturally in each others’ networks, will suffer as a result. Entrepreneurs will suffer because they will lack access to capital. Investors will suffer because they will lack access to the full complement of deals. [But] this is a societal issue, not one of VC or angel [investors], per se.”

Girl vs. Boy

There are some who, while agreeing with impact of the preference for same (or fear of other), say there are other forces impacting how women are perceived and behave as both entrepreneurs and business risk-takers. And some see it more simply than others.

Writes three-time start-upper, Brazen Careerist CEO and even brazener stereotyper Penelope Trunk in TechCrunch under the headline “Women Don’t Want To Run Startups Because They’d Rather Have Children”: “… you could tell that story [why women don’t get funding for startups] on one page: Startups move at break-neck pace, under a lot of pressure to succeed bigger and faster than any normal company. And women don’t want to give up their personal life in exchange for the chance to be the next Google. Or even the next Feedburner. Which is why the number of women who pitch is so small, and, therefore, the number of women who get funding is small.”

A more nuanced take, perhaps, comes from Cyan Banister, who is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Zivity, an artist/fan interaction platform that features comedy, music, animation and nude performance art. She has been named by Fast Company as one of the “The Most Influential Women in Web 2.0,” and is no stranger to the Silicon Valley investment scene and the fabled investment offices of Sand Hill Road. While her focus is primarily on the tech sector, she’s not afraid to make some broad brush strokes when looking at women in the entrepreneurial business world.

Banister agrees with Vosmek that “networking is largely at play” in the misfire between venture and angel investors and women entrepreneurs, but does say that gender differences are indeed another important element to consider: “In a world where taking risks is key,” she says, “women are more risk averse then men.”

This she attributes to “wiring” that goes back to our most ancient ancestors.

“People forget we’re animals,” she says. “We [women] are built to protect and nurture families while men play the role of risking their lives to bring back food. Just go to any poker room in a casino. How many women do you see? I’m not saying this is the case across the board, but men are largely more ready to assume risk than women.”

Banister acknowledges that these views may be controversial, but insists that they’re critical in understanding the dynamic behind why there are so few women investors and notable Google and Facebook-like stories involving female founders.

“When it comes to both playing the role of investor and that of the business person seeking investment, men and women are different,” she says. “Male investors traditionally seek big pay-off opportunities while women, me included, focus on slow growth over time. My husband [prominent investor and entrepreneur Scott Banister] is always looking for a 20-times return, while I look for two- or three- times return over time. I’m seldom wrong and he’s wrong a lot – but when he’s right, he’s right big-time.”

It’s true, of course, that “there are several prominent women who have launched their own startups and received VC funding  including Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth,  Rashmi Sinah, co-founder of SlideShare, Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar, Caterina Fake who co-founded Flickr and spearheaded Hunch.com,” points out Meghan Casserly in Forbes.  But if Banister is right about these proclivities, it’s easy to see how a community populated by men is investing in men, and how those investees are making more noise than women when it comes to media-hypeable stories.  Banister, who says that women bring to bear their own brand of profit-making value to the workplace, notes “there are hundreds of female success stories – you just don’t hear about a female Mark Zuckerberg.”

Stepping Up and In

High-risk or not, are women showing up to seek investment in the first place? Babson College research points out that “women appear more reluctant to apply for loans – more than 10 percent of men seek external equity financing, but less than two percent of women do the same.

“It is my opinion that this has to do with exposure to the opportunity of raising venture capital – and it is not unique to women,” says Vosmek. “The reality is that for most people, if you do not have role models who have gone before you, you are less likely to pursue an opportunity. We need more female high-growth role models.”

She adds that women are not pursuing high-growth entrepreneurship commensurate with their representation in fields that should lead to high-growth entrepreneurship. Women, Vosmek says, represent 30 percent of MBAs, 50.4 percent of PhDs, and over half of all college graduates.

The very-visible-these-days Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently gave a talk at TED where she addressed this issue. “Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” she said, adding that studies show that women don’t negotiate on their own behalf. Moreover, “Men attribute their success to themselves and women attribute it to other external factors. If you ask men why they did a good job they’ll say, ‘Because I’m awesome.’ … If you ask women, what they’ll say is that someone helped them, they got lucky [or] they worked really hard… It matters a lot, because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table.”

Both visibility (like that of Sandberg, Banister, Trunk and others like them) and encouragement can be enhanced, says Vosmek, by groups such as her own Astia, as well as others like Women 2.0, Golden Seeds and Girls in Tech.

“These organizations work to expose and inspire women to high-growth entrepreneurship – and then once they get there, ensure they succeed by giving them access to the networks that lead to capital and expertise,” she says, adding that groups like the OpEd Project, which are set up to address the dearth of female voices in the media, can also play a positive role.

A Note on Ethics

The bottom line here is that there’s a prominent convergence between ethics and values, and plain old good business sense when it comes to investing in women. This is quite notable, as it’s not always the case that doing the right thing means doing the profitable thing (though the point might be argued that in the long run this is always the sustainable case).

Says Vosmek: “I think the best investors clearly articulate their values and entrepreneurs would be wise to make sure they choose investors whose values align with their own. I believe that a commitment to building inclusive teams is a value that also happens to be smart business.”

Indeed, both Vosmek and Banister present as extremely smart businesspeople as much as they do female role models. For both, the issue isn’t so much about sexism as it is about the missed value proposition of bringing women to bear on profit-making.

There’s also a tragedy here that transcends opinions regarding the “why” of the situation. Consider our job-strapped society and try this on (also from Babson College): In the United States, “Women are starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men – if these women entrepreneurs started with the same capital as men, they would add 6 million jobs to the economy in 5 years.”

“For those of us seeking a jobs recovery – there you have it,” says Vosmek. “Solving this could be the competitive advantage the U.S. seeks.”

Image: kevindooley

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