TechCrunch50: How to pitch to women in a room full of dudes
Hey, here's an idea! When pitching your women-oriented company to a panel of investors and experts, why don't you make fun of fat chicks in the process?
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Let's not kid ourselves. Nobody was expecting the audience at the TechCrunch 50 event to be full of women. That's just the reality of Silicon Valley, notorious for its boys-club culture (and plethora of complaints about how hard it is to find a girlfriend).
So it was undoubtedly a challenge for two of the start-ups pitching to TechCrunch50's all-male panel of industry insiders in Tuesday morning's "Subscription & Commerce Marketplaces" category. They were offering the first look at companies that are geared toward a demographic that's just about the opposite of the conference's audience: women, and not necessarily tech-savvy ones.
The pitches from the two companies, high-end invitation service Cocodot and personal-finance resource Learnvest, couldn't have been more different.
First up was Cocodot, which was founded by former MySpace exec Shawn Gold. At MySpace, which he left about two years ago, Gold served as senior vice president of marketing and content. Which means, basically, the guy knows how to pitch. Cocodot, he said, has a very fine-tuned demographic. "The target is women, who really create 90-plus percent of events," Gold said, showing off the service's slick interface. It's an event planning service that aims to make online invitations an acceptable route for high-end events. There's another start-up, Pingg, offering a similar angle, but Cocodot hopes to court brands, PR firms, and corporations as well as individuals throwing parties. And it hopes to particularly target weddings--for which online invitations are still pretty verboten.
Gold, well-dressed and energetic, was clearly aware that his target demographic wasn't going to be found in the room. He demonstrated the site by sending a Cocodot greeting card to his wife that depicted two overweight women with the caption of "Does this card make my ass look big?" (Um, classy) and added at the end as an appeal to those present, "If you give Cocodot to your wife or girlfriend, you will definitely get lucky."
I'm all for a little levity, especially when we've all been sitting in the same overheated room for a half-day listening to one presentation after another. But Gold's pitch was frankly insulting to both the women who he hopes will use the service, as well as to the predominantly male audience with its assumption that the only way they could possibly understand the aim of Cocodot would be to put a fratty, "Dude! Get laid!" spin on it. Which is too bad, because Cocodot looked pretty darn cool, and the judges agreed. One of them, Google's Bradley Horowitz, said, "I don't want to like this" but admitted that "I could easily see this taking off" among the Hallmark crowd.
The next presentation, though flawed, was a breath of fresh air in comparison.
The CEO of Learnvest, a petite twentysomething blonde named Alexa von Tobel, was one of only a few female CEOs pitching companies at the entire two-day event. Her company, an online personal-finance compendium, is "designed to fill the enormous, gaping hole" between financial self-help books and expensive financial planners for hire, she explained.
"Our core audience is women, an audience historically ignored and underserved in this topic," von Tobel said. Learnvest lets members build up profiles for personalized personal-finance advice, set goals, and earn points and badges in a game-style format by accomplishing goals, helping other members, and offering feedback to the company.
Von Tobel was clearly nervous as hell, especially when the reception from the judges was less positive than she may have expected. Several of them were skeptical of the game-like format, wondering if it could really be applied to something as private and serious as personal finance.
"I could easily see guys I know wanting to be a level-19 ninja," judge Bradley Horowitz said. "I don't know anyone who wants to be a seventh-degree debt removal expert."
Another judge, Digg founder Kevin Rose, concurred. "It's going to be really hard to get people to admit that they're in debt and put that on a profile."
They make a very good point. But von Tobel had done her homework, armed with statistics from Harvard Business School studies about the lack of personal-finance resources for young people, especially women, finishing college and entering the workforce under mounting tuition debt.
"It's not taught in schools, it's not taught in colleges, (and) there's really no good resource online," she said. The judges remained skeptical of Learnvest's game setup, but von Tobel's well-informed rebuttal earned a round of unsolicited audience applause.
(Which, in a sense, is really too bad, as though it meant the TechCrunch50 audience was surprised to hear a young, well-dressed blonde offer such a coherent response.)
Conference organizer Jason Calacanis--who is the CEO of Mahalo, a start-up that targets an audience that isn't necessarily tech-savvy either--seemed to be aware of the fact that maybe Learnvest needed some feedback from outside the all-male judge panel.
"We have a number of women in the audience," Calacanis said, standing up and turning around to poll them on whether they'd want to try Learnvest out. Of course, not many hands went up. But that's to be expected when the audience is easily 75 percent male: every woman I could see had her hand raised.
The lesson? If you're pitching a women-focused company to a roomful of Y chromosomes, insulting the target audience--however absent they may be--is still pretty darn tacky. At a start-up pitch conference, the presentations need to be smart, well-informed, and above all, any pitch that's reliant on marketing to a niche demographic has to show that it takes that demographic seriously.
And don't assume that the guys are going to be too dumb to understand the straight sell, either. There doesn't always have to be a get-laid angle. At least I'd like to think so.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
There are plenty of girls out there who take care of themselves, aren't obese, and wouldn't consider themselves to be at all connected to the fatties just because they're both female. And some of them might just (gasp) laugh at those with no self-control (women or not).
This is no different than "black history" holidays where patronizing racists tell black kids to take pride in the accomplishments of others they've never met, because they look similarly (you know, just like some white kid should claim glory for Bill Gates' success as if that's a "white accomplishment").
But maybe it's not tribe-mentality sexism. Maybe reporters just spend too much time with too many go-out-every-day-looking-to-get-offended "victim" types.
An example of a clod who "doesn't get it", as well as an audience that is clueless about the difficult-to-crack women's market. If a company really wants to market to women, then present something that will ease her workload.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but society judges pretty much all women by weight. Even many women who "pass" this particular test feel that judgement, and are turned off by it.
But perhaps you think it's alright to make jokes about "lazy Mexicans", and expect any gainfully employed Mexican Americans to take it in stride because you weren't talking about them, just those "other" Mexicans.
Those of us who believe in individuals rather than racially-determined members of the collective would say that Michael Jordan and Bill Gates have more in common with one another than their black- and white-trash opposites, and bear responsibility for random others' failure or criminal actions.
(And, being accomplished individuals, they spend their time pursuing their own achievements rather than living vicariously through what other members of "their team" accomplish or apologizing for acts they never committed).
As someone in the generation with more debt than any other, I can tell you it isn't a case of these poor unfortunate souls just accidentally buying every shiny object under the sun with no clue they're borrowing that much. I know plenty of people my age racking up debt who know full well how to balance a checkbook or how to calculate compound interest.
It's not lack of knowledge, it's an attitude. They've been told by every commercial, teacher, and politician that they're entitled to every little thing their hearts desire, without having to work for it. Combine that with urban hipster lifestyles and more celebrity worship than you'd get from a 14 year old girl, and you have limitless demand from chasing every fad. They know full well what their 4th ipod in two years or that big screen TV costs, they just view it in terms of the (perpetual) monthly payment and accept that as a marginal cost.
"All my city-boy friends got rid of their iphone 3G for a 3GS, and it'll only be another $10/month on my credit card bill...I can afford that. Sure I just bought a TV and a Playstation, but that's just $25/month and $15/month." They know full well how to set aside the money to save up for it, they just choose not to because they've been told they deserve it NOW (and besides, if they save up for it, it would've been out for 8 months and be $50 or $100 cheaper, and how embarrassing would it be to just be getting it then?)
Fantastic article. Just wanted to say that. I really enjoyed this view of the situation, without being heavy handed in your overall assessment. Thanks.
seriously, you need to lighten up. your promise for misogynist discourse wasted my time.
Sammy
When the price of entry to internet business so small, more women should be able to make the leap.
There was a project called the Ebony experiment--where a family tried to support only black only businesses. What if women did the same on the web--what sites could we use/visit?
- by KathySierra September 21, 2009 3:28 PM PDT
- You made some good points, but I was surprised/amused that an article on gender imbalance/possible sexism in the tech world (and specifically, this event) referred to the female presenter as "petite" and "blonde". Would you have described a male presenter as a "muscular twenty-something brunette"? Why the emphasis on her blondeness (pointed out twice)? Why a suggestion about her weight (or rather a lack of) in a piece that complains about a male presenter's "fat chick" reference? I'm assuming you did this intentionally to make a point... but I'm not sure I understand it.
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