Q&A: Babson College’s Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab Miami director Michelle Abbs
Now in its fifth year in Miami, the Babson College Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab aims to promote women in technology and entrepreneurship, areas where they remain woefully underrepresented. First launched in Boston in 2013, the WIN Lab was created in response to studies that, at the time, showed just 13% of business incubator seats were held by women, and less than 20% of angel investment, and 3% of venture capital, was going to companies with female CEOs.
Six years later, data around venture funding has shown little change.
Last year, Babson tapped Michelle Abbs, a Michigan native and Florida International University grad, as its new Miami lab director. Prior to joining Babson, Abbs served as regional director for Up2Us, an organization focused on promoting women in sports.
In a response to a series of questions submitted by the Miami Herald, Abbs laid out her vision for the WIN Lab. Among other things, Abbs says she is now working with key community partners like Endeavor Miami and Miami Angels to ensure what she calls a gender-balanced pipeline to their programs and available funding.
“In the near future, I’d like to see a world where a female founder raising a million dollar round happens so frequently it doesn’t even need a news headline,” she says.
Q: Miami Herald: What is the mission of Miami’s WIN Lab?
A. The WIN Lab simply catalyzes the immense potential of female founders. We are a free venture accelerator designed for women entrepreneurs, by women entrepreneurs. Core to the model is our focus on empowering female founders to overcome the unique challenges they face in the startup ecosystem while building high growth businesses that solve even bigger problems.
Each year we deliver a 5 month accelerator program and work to create a new reality, one where both male and female founders are able to take their business ideas and grow them into thriving companies.
Michelle Abbs: What in your background attracted you to this position?
I believe in equity, I am an educator, and I thrive working within a collective toward an ambitious vision.
I grew up in a small town in Michigan. Our house sat on the municipal dividing line between the wealthy suburban area and the greater urban area. The fence in my backyard came to represent inequity in a stark and vivid way. It literally divided people across every line of difference: income, race, educational outcomes. Seeing this visual representation of the way life played out based solely on what side of the proverbial fence someone was born on seemed incredibly unfair. It lit a fire in me to break down these fences where outcomes were different for folks based on something outside their control.
I pursue this vision of equity through education. The role of an educator, in any context, translates a core set of tasks: setting an inspiring vision with measurable outcomes, providing learning experiences and resources, monitoring progress to the vision along the way and pivoting based on data collected. That’s in essence the work of an entrepreneur as well. With these two approaches being so synonymous I can understand the entrepreneurial journey and provide the program needed to help the female founders in the WIN Lab reach their business growth goals.
MH: What are the advantages, and disadvantages, to being a female entrepreneur in Miami?
MA: We’re paying attention to the topic of gender, so change is happening and yet there is so much left to be done. Being a female entrepreneur means you’re up against unconscious bias everyday in a myriad of ways. Unconscious bias can make business situations very tricky to navigate – and ultimately can end up hurting female founders. We’ve been conditioned to believe a set of things about gender roles and a woman’s place in the world, including the way women should look, speak, act and dress. This conditioning leads to instinctive reactions when reality meets, or does not meet, those conditioned expectations. And depending on how female entrepreneurs navigate those moments, it may mean an additional road block or challenge to growing their business.
Access to capital, as many would agree, is also a challenge - but let’s dig deeper. Access is one issue, access to funding that is good for the founder and a process that is fair to her, is another.
I’ve seen many of our women jump through additional hoops like complex backdoor data rooms requiring sharing of documents that put their intellectual property at risk, or traveling for a dozen non-local pitch presentations to the same investor all for a $10,000 investment check. The experience can feel unbalanced - as if the assumption is that she is more likely to fail so she has to work harder to prove herself. Worse yet, I’ve seen term sheets with very unfavorable terms offered to various female founders that would work them out of ownership of the company by the next fundraising round.
These additional challenges lead to grand opportunity. I think of them like crucible moments in leadership. As defined by the Harvard Business Review article, crucible moments are “a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced leaders to question who they are and what matters to them. It requires them to examine their values, question their assumptions and hone their judgment.” The advantage of being a female founder is that we turn the disadvantages, or crucible moments, into our strength: grit and resilience. Which in turn makes us better founders, CEOs and leaders. Various studies have been published recently demonstrating a clear pattern of female founders who outperform their male peers in return on investment. First Round Capital did a 10-year study of their investment portfolio and found that companies with a female founder performed 63% better than all male founding teams.
Locally, I also see an incredible camaraderie and support system among female founders and female leaders in entrepreneurship. We’re banding together as a true force of nature.
MH: What are some specific goals you have over the next few years?
MA: Keeping the ultimate vision of gender equity as the north star, I’m focused on achieving specific goals both through my role at the WIN Lab and by supporting the South Florida ecosystem at large.
I’ve seen a major gap in resources and programs offered to men who want to be part of the solution. I recently established The Male Ally Project, which seeks to expand the circle of men in our community who can take action to create a more gender equitable landscape for South Florida. I’ll be looking for the first group of 15 men to join the inaugural cohort. To begin, we’ll be partnering with author and male ally thought leader Julie Kratz to offer an initial lunch and learn webinar on February 28th. In the coming months, my goal is to activate our male peers to make a real dent in the gender gap locally.
I’m eager to see more female founders raise seed rounds and get accepted into prestigious programs that will catapult their business success.
MH: How can this community better support female entrepreneurs?
MA: First let’s all get comfortable with the uncomfortable. You are never “done” you are never “there” it’s a journey to reach diversity, equity and inclusion and it’s quite messy. Let’s embrace the mess together.
Second, a simple but actionable ask for the community. No more manels. Manel = panel of all men. Hold events and panels with speakers that are diverse. If you are asked to speak at an event, first ask the organizer who the other panelists are ensure the speakers represent diverse (gender, ethnicity, age etc.) demographics. On the other end, if you are the organizer, don’t be defensive when someone tries to help you diversify an event - it’s a win for us all! The more we strive for equity, the more we as a South Florida community thrive by showing the rest of the world what it truly means to be a place that is both diverse AND inclusive.
