Where you can always find a clean and empty women’s bathroom…

We’re taking a quick break from our regularly scheduled programming to talk for a few minutes about women and tech.  

weeSpring is a TechStars company, which means we’re in Chicago this weekend for FounderCon (yes, it’s as awesomely geeky as it sounds). There are about 350 TechStars founders here… and about 20 of us are women.  

No, I didn’t forget a digit.  I’m looking around a room where the best descriptor would be to say there are women sprinkled throughout the crowd.  The “no line for the women’s bathroom!” snark has actually become a meme.  And it is a total, total bummer.  

I know there’s a different standard for women.  I did an interview with AlleyWatch recently about this:

There’s the old adage that “women are judged on their performance; men are judged on their potential.”  I don’t think it holds true universally, but lately, I’ve heard a bunch of people say, “I invested because I just knew he was going to succeed.”  The most tenacious and fearless people I know are women.  I’d love to start hearing that sentence with a feminine pronoun: I just knew she was going to do great things / make me a ton of money / change the world.

But here’s the thing… it’s up to us to step up to the plate.  I feel every day like I am pushing a boulder up a mountain, and I’d be willing to bet my boulder is a little heavier than my male entrepreneur friends’.  But that makes me all the more determined to keep it rolling.

So.

If you’re reading this, and you have an idea, or you think you might want to start a company… you should do it.  You should apply to a (good) accelerator, or do a Lean Startup workshop.  You can do it.  

We did it.

(NB: we didn’t do it alone.  We got awesome mentorship from really amazing women, and we want to pay it forward.  Email me if you need a pep talk.)