By Rivka Borochov
Hilla Ovil-Brenner experienced the same scenarios as an Israeli female startup CEO, time and time again. The FedEx guy would come to the office with a package, see her behind a desk and ask her for the boss.
Or she’d enter an investor’s meeting with her male CTO and be bypassed for the first handshake. It was always expected that she was the secretary, in marketing, PR, or working in another support role for the men –– not as the leader of a startup company.
Ovil-Brenner has founded and led the grammar-correction software company Whitesmoke in Israel, and took it public to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. She’s since founded KeyDownload, and runs a non-profit venture, Yazamiyot, to help women get a leg up -- with or without pantyhose -- on the startup scene.
She says Yazamiyot (Hebrew for female entrepreneurs) “started as a small meet-up group where about 10 women got together once a month to have dinner and discuss things that were common denominators for both sides. Like motherhood and career.
“Women really love to help each other and there was a need,” says Ovil-Brenner. “Now there are over 600 women in various stages of entrepreneurship careers. Some run companies and are CEOs of companies and some are early-stage entrepreneurs.”
And it’s not just men who aren’t supporting the women of the startup nation. “Women aren’t giving the support that’s needed to steer that big passion of ours. And the problems even come out of really liberal men sometimes, too,” she says.
But times are a-changin’ in Israel, says the native South African. “I think we enhance women – it’s kind of like affirmative action.”
Truth be told, when Ovil-Brenner started her career in high-tech, and founded Whitesmoke more than a decade ago, she never considered herself a minority in any way. But looking back, she knows that this was a naïve way of looking at the on-the-ground reality of things.
Beating the statistics
The statistics show that only about nine percent of new ventures in Israel include a woman founder. The female gender is a rare commodity in the startup field of the startup nation.
Seeing that about half of the world is women, with plenty to contribute in developing apps, devices and services for women, there are loads of business opportunities for funding female-run ventures.
A number of programs help women specifically start up in Israel, including We Dream, run by Elena Donets the CEO of StarTAU , at Tel Aviv University.
We Dream provides a very organized startup package for women-led ventures in the early stages. Donets brings in key lecturers and organizes a demo day for the companies consolidated at the seminar.
There is also a new venture network comprised of women investors, Eva Ventures. It’s a micro VC fund and incubator “so women can start their startups,” asserts its motto.
Startups, not for charity
Women entrepreneurs in Israel, says Ovil-Brenner, certainly don’t want to be viewed as needy.
“When we started, women would say to me, ‘I don’t want an investor to invest in me because I am a charity case.’ I spoke with one woman recently who met with an investor. He looked at her and said, ‘Once I invested in someone who is Palestinian.’
“You see, in his mind, he is thinking of women as a minority in Israel, like Palestinians. This woman wanted him to relate to her presentation.”
On a positive note, the mandatory army service in Israel is known for building character and good startup material, says Ovil-Brenner. “Because women do go to the army – even though the majority is still not in very senior positions there.”
The military experience helps them master drive, ambition and focus.
Are Israeli women simply riding on the success of their engineering and startup husbands? “I don’t see much of that,” says Ovil-Brenner. “Israeli women are very resourceful.”
Some women have brought up the idea that since the investment odds are stacked against them, perhaps they should run their companies from the sidelines and find a “poster boy” CEO of the male gender.
That notion makes Ovil-Brenner really unhappy. “This is why I founded Yazamiyot -- so it doesn’t happen like that. So every woman can be herself. More importantly, so she can be strong.”