Cindy Padnos, founding managing director of Illuminate Ventures, on how entrepreneurial Indian men with tech backgrounds who arrived in the U.S. in the 80's overcome many of the challenges faced by women in tech today, primarily "otherness" as we'd say in women's studies:
I asked these guys how they did it, and they told me it took 30 years. Many of them were part of successful teams. Eventually, they attained management positions and gained equity and wealth. Motivated by a strong belief that they had been treated like second-class citizens, one successful Indian entrepreneur turned around and helped finance another. In many ways, they’ve mapped the road for women. Although women don’t generally share the immigrant mentality, which pushes foreign-born groups to band together and help one another.
via boss.blogs.nytimes.com
It's worth reading the whole interview conducted by Adriana Gardella who is a woman entrepreneur and writes about women entrepreneurs as part of "She Owns It" on the New York Times small business blog, You're the Boss: The Art of Running a Small Business. Another great start-up/small business resource is Fred Wilson's ongoing blog post series, MBA Mondays. If you run a start-up business, these should be required reading. So many online blogs and resources for start-ups are focused on raising money and how to hire/run a software/engineering focused company. But hiring your team, securing funding, and launching your product are only the beginning. If you don't understand the fundamentals of running a small business, well, you'll be out of business.
