Deborah Buresh Jackson is the founder and CEO of Plum Alley, a site for women to raise money for ventures. She founded Plum Alley in 2012 to provide new ways for women to access capital through the use of technology and their networks. Prior to that, she was an investment banker for more than two decades, and her clients included many health care technology and Internet companies. She was a founder of the Women Innovate Mobile Accelerator and has invested in many early-stage technology-related companies.
I grew up in a large family with four siblings and moved constantly during my youth. I was often thrown into new environments and new public schools and had to find my way. I went to a state college with subsidized tuition so that I could pay for my education, and I was the first in my family to get a college diploma and a graduate degree. After my undergraduate years in Michigan, I moved to Boston with a box of possessions and fifty dollars in my pocket. I lived in the dining room of a friend’s apartment, worked in a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge, and found my first professional job through the newspaper job ads. All of this instilled a sense of self-reliance, taught me to deal with uncertainty, and honed my survival instinct, but I didn’t have any contacts or role models to turn to. So I just closed my eyes and asked, “What do I want my life to be like? How will I get there?”
Like other women, I worked because I had to. I decided that I wanted to make enough money in my career to provide for my family and give them more opportunities. After Columbia Business School in 1980, I joined Goldman Sachs. The technology industry did not have a presence in New York in any meaningful way at the time, so I was not exposed to tech as a career option. As an investment banker, my first clients were nonprofits and hospitals, and later health care technology and Internet companies.
Wall Street was, and is, a brutal environment for women. Women are in the minority, particularly in C-level positions. The inequality in pay, promotion, and recognition hurts the soul and spirit. After twenty-one years, I hung up my boxing gloves and, with a great sense of relief, left Wall Street. I then coached female entrepreneurs because they were the happiest women I had met. They had dreams, they were using and building technology—they were creating their own destinies. Looking to them, I decided to get back in the game in a new way with my own rules, and I founded a company.
Why did I become an entrepreneur? Because I wanted to have a big impact, and I knew I would find a way to do that. As women, we must build our companies, our networks, and our wealth. We have no other choice. The only way to be optimistic about the future is to change things when you see something that isn’t right or is unfair.
I am keenly aware that women need access to capital and the right advisors to open doors for them, so I founded my company, Plum Alley, and cofounded the WIM Accelerator, to provide the tools and connections to spur female entrepreneurs to success. I want to be an example for others that strong convictions matter, that you can found a company at any age, and that you can build an economically viable company that matters.
With that in mind, there are three things I think are necessary for success: absolute conviction, the need to succeed, and money.
Absolute conviction means no half-ways, no equivocation. What you are doing is not optional. You care so deeply that you will never give up. You have profound determination because you care that much. What you are doing matters.
The second factor is that you have no choice but to succeed, and you will do what it takes to get there. You ignore all the naysayers and surround yourself with people who believe in you and your idea. You will not back down. You will succeed and you will make something out of nothing because you have to. You must survive, and you must make that contribution to the world.
The final ingredient is the money to build your dream. The best way to build and grow a business is with the income you generate in your company—build a product that someone wants so much they will pay big bucks for it. And when you need outside capital, go for it. There are so many parallels between Wall Street and venture capital firms. Both investment banking firms and venture capital firms are about allocating capital, and both are dominated by white men and operate as a club.
So what do you do? Walk out of any meeting where the investor doesn’t get what you are doing and don’t look back. Remind yourself that venture investors are not gods. In fact, the returns on most VC portfolios are lower than the market in general.
VCs need you to make returns. If they don’t get it, just move on and prove them wrong. You will survive because you have to. Close your eyes and say, “What do I want my life to be like? How will I get there?”