Women 2.0 sits down with entrepreneur, scaling coach and author, Julia Pimsleur to discuss the upcoming Million Dollar Women Summit.
What drove you to put the summit together?
You know that quote, “Do the one thing that scares you?” I wrote Million Dollar Women because as an entrepreneur (I founded Little Pim language learning for young children), I was mad about two statistics: only 3% of all women entrepreneurs get to one million in revenues (it’s 6% of men) and only 4% of venture capital is invested in female led companies.
Now I am on a mission to help one million women get to one million in revenues by 2020.
After my book, Million Dollar Women, was published, I started coaching women from all over the country on how to scale up their businesses in my MDW Masterclass. They loved being in this online community but then they started asking “when are we going to meet in person?” I really had no plans for a summit at the time, but it felt like these were signs that it needed to happen and was the next important step in the MDW movement. However, I was also terrified! I had never raised corporate sponsorship dollars. I had never organized an event for 150 people. I knew I’d need to call in pretty much every favor — which I have. The Summit is going to be a game changer for the women who attend – part coaching, part interactive workshops, part pitch competition.
What can female entrepreneurs expect to gain from the summit?
The summit is designed to help women fill in their knowledge gaps, so they can accelerate their businesses more quickly. We survey all our attendees and ask them what they need to learn. Then we put them in interactive workshops on those topics with top rated teachers.
We also match each attendee with a female founder coach in their same industry who has “been there, done that” and can provide lessons learned and contacts.
We end the day with a Pitch Competition where five attendees will present their companies to five judges, who it would take you months to get in front of, and one will walk away with a $50K investment and in kind prizes.
Tell us a little about the keynote speakers.
Katherine Minshew is Co-Founder and CEO of the Muse and Alpana Singh is a Restauranteur and Master Sommelier, as well as host of an Emmy-award winning show. They’re joined by an incredible array of female founders who will be sharing their experiences with the MDW community.
What will the Pitch element add to the summit?
I go to a lot of women’s festivals and conferences where people tell their success stories of fundraising or bemoan the lack of funding. We decided to do neither and just use that time to create an opportunity for five women to pitch in a relatively friendly and supportive environment and walk away funded.
I am passionate about seeing more women raise capital and scale up their businesses, so I am especially excited about this part of the Summit.
Why, in your opinion, are women so far behind in terms of large entrepreneurial success stories?
We have been starting companies at nearly twice the rate that men have over the last two decades but we are not yet “going big” in large numbers. This needs to change. Women really just need three things to get to the million dollar mark and beyond – the right mindset, skill set and network.
Why did you choose Microsoft for the summit headquarters?
We are thrilled to be holding the summit at Microsoft. They are such a friend to small businesses and to women entrepreneurs specifically. We have a deep partnership with them and they are champions of female founders.
Will this become an annual event and will there be summits in other cities?
The MDW summit will be an annual event and we are in conversations with partners in other cities. Stay tuned!
What are you looking forward to most about the summit?
I am most looking forward to seeing the faces of the 150 women, knowing the impact this will have on their businesses. I wish I could have attended something like this when I was scaling up my business, Little Pim. I am also excited to celebrate the Summit with the Justice League, my incredible advisory council, who conceived and executed the summit with me and are a class A group of superheroes! A special thanks also goes out to Laura Mignott from Digital Flash for connecting me with Women 2.0.
Attend the Million Dollar Women Summit.
Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 5:30 PM
New York, NY
Unlock the site with: Staybrave
$100 discount code for Women 2.0 community: MDWS100
Julia Pimsleur is the CEO and founder of Million Dollar Women, creator of the Million Dollar Women Summit for high-growth women entrepreneurs, and the author of Million Dollar Women: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big. Pimsleur’s work with women entrepreneurs grew out of her own experiences as the founder and CEO of Little Pim, language teaching for young children, one of the few women-led venture capital backed companies in the U.S. Pimsleur has raised over $26 million in angel, venture and philanthropic dollars and blogs regularly about entrepreneurship, fundraising, and the “go big mindset.” Pimsleur is the daughter of language teaching pioneer, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, as well as an award-winning filmmaker, trained NLP master practitioner coach, and mother of two.
About the Interviewer: Elisa Miller-Out is COO of Women 2.0, Co-Founder of PollQ, a polling bot and Managing Partner at Chloe Capital, an early stage investment fund with a focus on women tech entrepreneurs.
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