Female entrepreneurs get short shrift from Silicon Valley's VC giants. Jenny Abramson's Rethink Impact sees that as an opportunity to profit
Image: Jamel Toppin for Forbes
Venture capitalist Jenny Abramson is holding her once-a-month open office hours at Hera Hub, a women’s co-working space in Washington, DC. She deftly jots notes with a stylus on an iPad while maintaining eye contact as Kimberly Linson tells her about Leaderally, a new professional learning site for teachers.
Linson, 46, is clutching a Dream/Believe/Achieve notebook and understandably seems a tad nervous about the site’s planned January beta launch. She and her two female co-founders quit their management jobs at a tutoring company to take the entrepreneurial plunge.
After peppering Linson with questions, Abramson declares herself “thrilled” with the Leaderally concept but suggests the women market initially to charter school teachers, who typically have less experience and more flexibility to adopt new methods than their public school counterparts.
“ Our industry has been in the headlines for the wrong things lately. We have the opportunity to level the playing field.”
(This story appears in the 13 April, 2018 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)