"Are you worried that funding is going down, Fatma?" asked one of Pheronym's investors a few months ago. “No," I said. "It seems like everyone is going to be experiencing funding the way we/women founders experience it all the time." Techcrunch states, "Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all VC funds…

First Republic Bank (FRB) implosion felt very different from Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB). This time we were in the middle of the crisis because FRB was our bank. The news about FRB quarterly earnings on Wednesday and plummeting stocks worried us. We were running payroll on Wednesday. …

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure news. …

Securing intellectual property is among the many challenges women innovators face in agricultural innovation. To learn how these amazing women entrepreneurs tackle and overcome the challenges, listen to the “Together in Innovation: Agricultural Advances Webinar” by USPTO or read below for some highlights. Briefly, tell us a bit more about…

I could not in my wildest dreams imagine navigating a startup through the valley of death during a global pandemic. Now I’ve been doing it for two years, with no end in sight. The COVID-19 pandemic feels like a time loop that keeps resetting itself every 3–4 months with a…

At first glance, business competitions are a huge validation for startups and their technologies. They create the appearance of objectivity by selecting the best startups out of a pool of 300 or more to compete. …

As a woman entrepreneur, I have fewer resources than many other entrepreneurs. I have to maximize the resources I have to effectively and efficiently bring the nematode pheromone technology to the market. That brings me to the business pitch competitions, the double edge-sword! Business competitions can provide unique benefits compared…

Dr. Marrone’s accomplishments have had an extraordinarily positive impact on the agriculture and food industry. Dr. Marrone started three successful, high-impact agricultural natural product companies (Novo Nordisk Entotech, Inc., AgraQuest, Inc., Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc.,) to bring sustainable, eco-friendly pest control to farmers. At AgraQuest, she developed eight products from…

At the Activate fellowship program, last week’s topic was the product-market fit and value proposition: How do we convince the VP to pay for our product? Among many amazing entrepreneurship programs at accelerators and business mentorship programs, none of them presented the value proposition the way the Activate fellowship program…