I've worked with a weirdly large number of female-run and female-focused startups and clients over the years. I could write a long, blunt tirade about this. Ba

I've worked with a weirdly large number of female-run and female-focused startups and clients over the years. I could write a long, blunt tirade about this. Basically the cards are stacked against these businesses from the day they are funded. Male tech folks make a lot of false assumptions about female focused businesses. For investors it can mean leaving a complicated business model under-funded. For developers it means blindly taking a “cofounder” title in exchange for an equity-heavy compensation deal without thinking through what it means to work on a business you aren’t passionate about, for years, at reduced pay. In both cases, if there isn't an early slam-dunk hockey stick marker of success, guys don’t have the stamina to tolerate a female-focused business for very long. They bail. The company never gets its next round of funding. The engineering talent runs for the hills. Its not cool to work on a company for girls, especially a struggling company for girls. So male talent will just split as soon as the going gets rough. Each time the company has a setback, the guys all start to bail. So the company needs to find new talent and appease many people at every little bump in the road. This is hugely costly and results in a lot of unnecessary crisis moments, doubts, and subsequent pivots. The sad part is that a lot of female founders leave startups for good after one failure. I have a linkedin network filled with former female founder superstars who work in humdrum non-tech management roles. Women take the loss on a much more personal level than men do. So every time a female founder is stunted, and then abandoned by her male support network, she may be gone for good. What’s the solution? I’m not sure, but I think it has a lot to do with adding more female investors and developers to the world. That and encouraging more former female founders to come back, mentor and try again