Risham Dhillon was taking a course on startups at Harvard when she noticed how few female students were in her class. Dhillon knew then that she wanted to take action.
Only 4.94 percent of venture capital investments made in 2016 were in women-led companies according to Four94, an organization which describes itself as “mentorship, community, and launching pad for up-and-coming women student entrepreneurs.” The organization held their kickoff conference at Boston CIC last Saturday, featuring presentations, skill-teaching workshops and circle chats with established entrepreneurs.
Dhillon, a Harvard senior, is one of Four94’s five co-founders.
Katherine Binney, another Four94 co-founder, said gender disparity in education inspired the group’s formation and the creation of its kickoff conference.
“That really gave [Dhillon] a sense that […] this is something that’s really significant, even in my small world,” Binney said. “She and Janet were the ones who kind of kick started and said, ‘Yes, let’s do something about it. Let’s start some female entrepreneurship conference.’”
Maya Simon, senior vice president of growth at Zola, gave the conference’s keynote at the beginning of the day.
Simon said that while working at a startup, gender affected her experience. In her talk, she shared advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
“I would say 1 percent of the time feels like you’re crushing it,” Simon said. “And 99 percent of the time feels like you’re being crushed.”
Katie Williams is the assistant head of events at Boston CIC, a co-working space geared toward providing entrepreneurs with a venue for growth. She said her organization was excited to partner with the Four94 organizers.
“They reached out to us,” Williams said. “Our events model is such that we try to support events that fit our mission. And as soon as we saw their email come in, we were like, ‘We need them here, absolutely.’”
The conference’s attendees ranged from college freshmen to graduate students, hailing from both local universities and schools thousands of miles away.
Angela Wang, a freshman from the University of Texas at Austin, said she traveled to Boston for the event to learn about opportunities for women in business.
“I’m in the business school at UT, and I’m trying to figure what I want to major in within the business school,” she said.
Tariana Little is the co-founder and co-CEO of EmVision Productions, a Boston-based social impact storytelling company. She said she attended the event with hopes of finding a direction for her next venture.
“My next idea is to have an app related to food insecurity,” Little said. “I took it to a hackathon and won, and I recently signed a development contract so we can get developed. So I’m really thinking strategically about what that’s going to look like.”
Little was particularly excited about the conference’s circle chats, she said, since it offered attendees a chance to chat with seasoned professionals.
“I’m super excited because I want to get people’s insights,” Little said. “I think it’s super enriching when you have other folks who have been through it.”
Binney said the team found mentors in a variety of ways — news articles, conversations with classmates and research. Notably, the organizers had no connection to the vast majority of the conference’s mentors prior to contacting them.
“We would reach out and say ‘Hey, we’re starting this initiative. Are you interested in joining?’” Binney said. “And, overwhelmingly, the answer was ‘I feel this very strongly. This is something that’s personal to me, and we would love to help out.’”
Yong Dich, another one of Four94’s co-founders, said that Dhillon served as a mentor to her fellow co-founders, which helped them decide to make mentorship an element of the conference.
“I never realized how important mentorship was, but I feel like it could be really formal or really informal,” Dich said. “Your friends could be your mentors, and [Dhillon’s] really good friends are her mentors,.”
Little said mentorship is an important part of being a young entrepreneur.
“We know that there are many challenges to being a woman entrepreneur and being a young woman entrepreneur,” she said, “but once you’re in this space, you find that there’s a really supportive community that embraces you and says, ‘You can do this, too.’”
