Female Entrepreneurs Seek Capital and Connections at SXSW

Jane Applegate is reporting live from SXSW in Austin.
Outnumbered by men by about 25 to 1, hundreds of female entrepreneurs are at SXSW Interactive to pitch potential investors, make connections and promote their apps and technologies.
“We’ve met some great people and already have a lot of follow up meetings, says Kaylyn Thornal, co-founder and CEO of Fanzooloo, a website and smartphone app that provides local information on tickets, parking, restaurants and merchandise for sports fans across the country. “There’s a couple of companies that would be really good strategic partners.”
Thornal and co-founder Natasha Bedu (pictured) traveled from Los Angeles to Austin to raise awareness of their new company and raise $500,000 from angel investors.
Sitting on the steps outside the chaos of the Austin Convention Center, they said the inspiration for their website came after they spent $40 on parking to attend a baseball game in San Francisco. Then, they spent two hours trying to get out of the garage after the game.
“When we finally got out of the garage, we passed a garage that charged $8,” Thornal recalls, adding that providing insider information to sports fans seemed like a good idea and spawned their new venture.
To support themselves and their new company, Thornal and Bedu both work in television production in Los Angeles. Thornal, an editor, originally pitched Fanzooloo as a reality TV show, similar to the popular travel shows starring Anthony Bourdain.  In 2009, even though the show didn’t sell, she decided to build a website and app. (She still thinks it would make a great sports-oriented travel show).
The potential universe of users is huge. Sixty percent of Americans are sports fans, she says, with 55 percent of men and 45 percent of women identifying themselves as sports fans. Last year, more than 100 million people attended a professional sporting event, with 73 million professional baseball tickets sold, Thornal says.
“Sports is the fifth largest industry in America with revenues of about $500 billion,” she says.
So far, they are feeling positive about finding investors. They managed to meet briefly with Kay Koplovitz, founder of USA Networks and co-founder of Springboard Enterprises, an organization dedicated to helping women find venture capital.
“We just won a pitch competition at the Los Angeles Venture Capital Association,” says Bedu. “And we will participate in a three-month incubator program in Pasadena.”
And last week they got their first check, for a portion of tickets sold through an affiliate.
Other women gathered at a Springboard dinner to share their SXSW experiences. Morgan First, co-founder and CEO of Second Glass, a site promoting wine for young consumers, flew in from San Francisco to look for cash and contacts. Sandy Barger, chief marketing officer for Everloop, a new kid-friendly social networking platform, was here to meet potential sponsors and mingle.
SXSW Interactive is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. Women pitched potential investors during a Dolphin Tank program organized by Springboard Enterprises. Hundreds more attended ‘speed-dating’ style sessions organized by Dream Life, which runs boot camps in the U.S. and Israel.
The international contingent this year was robust, with France, Canada and Ireland sending business development teams to the trade show. Le Camping, a six-month small-business accelerator program—founded by Silicon Sentier, a group of entrepreneurs, and supported by Google, BNP Paribas and SNCF, among others—set up a booth on the SXSW trade show floor to promote their mentorship program. So far, six companies have attracted seed funding, according to Patrick Perlmutter, entrepreneur in residence.
Sean O’Sullivan, "chief socializer" for LocalSocial in Dublin, was in the Enterprise Ireland booth to promote his new discount program for small businesses. Special offers and discounts are unlocked when customers step into a store. He said businesses pay about $30 a month to participate.
I asked O’Sullivan what he thought about SXSW. “It’s like a combination of Mardi Gras and Paddy’s Day: absolute madness,” he says with a smile.
Photo credit: Jane Applegate