“Women have an integral problem of being shy when speaking about money.”
So said Inna Braverman, co-founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power, during the Jerusalem Post's Women Leaders Summit on Wednesday.
During a panel, Braverman and Danielle Biton, owner of E.D.I Energy, offered their advice to female entrepreneurs and shared their experiences as women in leadership positions.
"When male entrepreneurs need $1 million for their new start-up, they ask for $5 million because they know it will take longer and they will make mistakes. When a woman needs $1 million, she asks for $200,000 because she says to herself ‘Well, I have to prove myself before I ask for the money that I actually need.’ And that's kind of a showstopper for women,” Braverman said.
"When male entrepreneurs need $1 million for their new start-up, they ask for $5 million because they know it will take longer and they will make mistakes. When a woman needs $1 million, she asks for $200,000 because she says to herself ‘Well, I have to prove myself before I ask for the money that I actually need.’ And that's kind of a showstopper for women,”
Inna Braverman
Braverman went on to note that a female tendency toward professional perfectionism can lead to less opportunities in the long run.
“For some reason, we feel that we have to be perfect. There was a study that was done by HP that showed that a woman will not apply for a job unless she meets 100% of the criteria. And men would apply to the same job when he meets only 60%," she recalled.
“That comes from the fact that women really think that we have to be perfect, but we don't. I opened my company when I was 24. I did two IPOs. I had no technical knowledge and no financial background and I still went ahead and did it. So if I could do it, any woman can,” she said.
The difficulties of women breaking into traditional industries
Biton, 26, recalled the difficulties she faced as a young woman breaking into a very traditional industry. “I had no experience in solar energy or in the electricity field at all. I'm 1.60 meters tall and blonde,” she said, which alienated her from her potential clients within the “very, very old fashioned” agriculture and industrial sectors. “My first impression wasn't very easy to go through.”
“It wasn't very easy, but I think that the best thing that I've done was to carry on and to speak about the thing that I believed in. And I really do believe now that [as long as] young women don’t stop promoting themselves, if young women won't be ashamed of what they do, if they continue on, they will eventually succeed,” Biton said. “I needed to run after this huge dream that I've had with no experience and no financial resources at all. Now I can say that the consistency is worth it.”