Millions Will Compete and Millions Will Win...Millions™

2. It’s Not Just
A Dream, It’s

4. K I M L A V I N E

5. I thought the biggest barrier holding
women back was reluctance by male
investors to invest in women-led
businesses. I Was Wrong. Never in a million
years would I have thought that putting
together $100 million in investor
commitments for THE NEXT BIG DREAM
would have been the easiest piece of this
epic journey.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
Women own 48% of all businesses, but only receive 4% of all private equity to start and grow those
businesses. As a result, only 3% of women-owned businesses have annual revenues of a million dollars or
more. I’m here to change that. Kim Lavine

6. In 2002, after my husband lost his job, I took my kitchen table idea, the Wuvit® – a designer spa
therapy pillow you heat in the microwave – to $225,000 in sales in just 8 weeks. In 2004 we rolled
out to 250 Saks Inc stores in just 4 months, quickly followed by Macy’s, Gottschalks, Von Maur, Bed
Bath & Beyond, Whole Foods, and Tabi, a 90-store chain in Canada. In 2005, at Saks request, we
launched a signature line of designer pajamas under the Green Daisy brand to record sell-throughs.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
I accomplished these feats of design,
sales, manufacturing and distribution
with little more than determination,
the equity in my home and personal
savings. Now I needed serious money.

7. My search for serious money took me to the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center, where the first Tuesday of
every month three entrepreneurs pitched a panel of investors. Everybody here, including Nobel laureates, was in a
state of Code Red when it came to money. There was blood in the water and sharks in the audience and the
investor panel spared no egos as they tore apart business plans, technology, burn rates and especially, presenters’
attire. I was scared just sitting in the audience.
There were at least a hundred spectators in the crowded room, all focused on a panel before them made up of
three investors, one of them the most buttoned-down, formidable-looking Master of the Universe I had ever seen
in my life whom I called Smart Money. The presentations were over and I dashed up to the front and made my pitch
to Smart Money. It wouldn’t be long before we were talking regularly
.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

8. I worked for three months to put together an initial meeting with The Grand Angels in Grand
Rapids Michigan at the brand new Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences. One of the investors at
that meeting tore up my business plan and threw it in my face. I closed the deal with that same
group three months later.
I understood this was a big chess game with all kinds of players who
needed to sense risk and imminent fear of losing in order to keep
forward progress. Emotions were just the playing pieces, not the
players.
Suddenly I was pulling strings, applying pressure and threatening to
walk, not meaning one word of it. I could have never done it without
the help of Smart Money. The question was: would other women be
able to do this? And who would teach them how?
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

9. “Everything begins with a dream, a search for something better, an idea, the
courage to face a challenge, and the passion to get it done. You can do it. Believe
in yourself. Change the rules. Join the revolution.”
from MOMMY MILLIONAIRE
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
I saw a segment on Oprah where she was interviewing moms who created million dollar
businesses in their free time while homeschooling their children and thought it was a myth
that would demoralize millions of women. I wrote a segment pitch for her producers called
the “Myth of the Mommy Millionaire.” My assistant thought it would be a great book. I
emailed it to 6 agents that day and had 2 contracts on my desk by the end of the week.
I’ll never forget the day I got out of a cab on
Broadway and looked up at the famous Flat
Iron Building, star-struck. I didn’t know it
then but I was about to go in and meet the
most fabulous person in New York, who
would change my life forever. She was one
of the biggest franchise makers in
publishing, and soon to be my Editor.

10. My first book tour appearance would be on the #1 morning news program, THE TODAY SHOW. I had a 5
minute segment with 4 remotes answering questions from 4 viewers around the country. I had to
prepare 3 bullet point answers in advance for each question which would be displayed on TV’s, but not
on my monitor, and I had to hit each one in order.
My publicist and I were standing just outside the studio entrance to the Today Show rehearsing as
Martha Stewart walked out, having just finished her segment, looking me up and down. We tried to find
a seat in the tiny green room, but it was filled up by Paula Dean and her entourage of sons and family. I
was so rehearsed I could hit the bullet points in my sleep; it was a good thing because when we went live
with the interview, Anne Curry asked me the wrong question first, sending the producers into a panic
behind her as I adlibbed, not remembering a word I said.
“An inspiring gift and road map to success.”
STARRED REVIEW: “an impressive
entrepreneurial saga…a top-notch how-to
guide on launching a business…..a rare gem.
“Loaded with resources for a fledgling
business, woman or man."
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

11. My book tour was supposed to be three weeks, but it turned into three months. I was crisscrossing the
country hitting every TV and radio station on the way promoting book store and speaking events. I was
staying at the Conrad Hotel in downtown Indianapolis when I woke up one morning and had to call the
front desk to remind me what city I was in.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
Everywhere I went everybody wanted to know how to
raise angel capital. Those who had already read my book
said they were afraid to try. I couldn’t sugar-coat the
process but I had to put it into sweet sound bites for the
media. Raising capital was the most important job any
entrepreneur had and nobody was teaching anybody how
to do it. The only way you could learn how to do it, was to
do it; there were land mines and deal breakers every step
of the way. The dramatic and honest description of how I
did it made my book read like a page-turning novel, and
turned it into a bestseller.

12. .”
Around us were seated a star-studded cast of
celebrities and media executives in a room coursing
with power lunchers. Joan Rivers was at one table.
Atoosa Rubenstein sat next to us wearing a bright green
dress. It could have been my imagination, but they all
seemed to be looking at Diane, who’s table
commanded the center of the room. She had invited
me here to tell me that she and some partners were
starting a new media company, including the former
Creative Director of one of the world’s biggest ad
agencies, and the former Editor at a major women’s
magazine. These were some of the smartest people in
the business. “Was I interested?” Was I dreaming?
Michael himself ushered me to where she was seated, exclaiming, “Diane is your Editor? You’re so lucky,
she’s the best Editor in the world.”
I thought I knew just how fabulous the most fabulous person in New York was, until she took me to
Michaels, where we sat at her “own table
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

13. But I had investors and I was fighting a battle in the board room to control the direction of my company.
Raising capital nearly killed me. I had no idea I had to continue the fight with the same kind of stamina and
determination in the board room, and no idea what I was in for in the months ahead. The first cannonball was
launched over my bow over lunch at the Bryant Park Grill in NY.
My CEO wanted to convert to a licensing model, and
if anybody could do it, he could. It all looked good on
paper, but I was the only one in the board room who
worried if the vertical money would run out before
the licensing revenues kicked in.
My business was built on a vertical business model
of design, manufacturing, sales and distribution
into premiere retailers like Saks Inc, Bed Bath &
Beyond, Gottschalks, Whole Foods and others, all
of which I had brought on before bringing on
investors.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

14. “Closing the Gender Gap is estimated to
boost US GDP by 9% Eurozone GDP by
13%, Japan GDP by 16%.*Companies with
a higher percentage of women in top
management experienced 35% higher
Return on Equity and 34% higher Total
Return to shareholders. Emerging Global
Talent Crisis resulting in ‘Brain waste’ due
to widespread gender gap caused by
traditions, conservative attitudes and
social norms. Global economy will face
demographic shock of a scale not yet
observed.” Nadereh Chamlou in a report
to the World Bank
I was home with my kids when I caught an interview with John Micklethwait, Editor-In-Chief of THE
ECONOMIST on C-SPAN. I was immediately captivated by his urbane yet modest demeanor and witty
command of recondite economic theories.
I devoured THE ECONOMIST’S irreverent reports of the raucous exploits of ‘Davos Man.’ I read the
reports by Nadereh Chamlou and wondered why no one had heard of her before
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

15. A few weeks later I was back in New York staying at the Melia hotel on West 35th near Fox Studios where I
was appearing on the nationally-syndicated Morning Show Mike & Juliet. My limo driver picked me up
from La Guardia and spent the whole drive into the city telling me how worried he was about the
economy. I told him everything was going to be alright, that a few sub-prime mortgage brokers were
going to go under, but they probably deserved to.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
I remember watching in horror from my
hotel room that week as the reports on
CNBC gradually became more frantic by
the minute as the true reality of the
financial crisis began to materialize
before the nation’s eyes

16. I was shocked to promptly find myself seated next to the Governor with only 8 people in
attendance: her Chief of Staff, Press Secretary, the VP of the MEDC, and the Directors of the
MWF and the MWC. The Governor had to excuse herself throughout dinner to take calls
from leaders at Chrysler as she negotiated a multi-billion dollar bail-out in Washington as I
watched
The economy was in free fall and Michigan was ground zero. Michigan was about to
become a state of entrepreneurs, by necessity, not choice, and they wanted to know my
ideas for helping laid-off autoworkers make the transition. “Connect women with capital,” I
boldly told them, “and stop incentivizing failure by giving investors the tax-deduction when
they put their money into the start-up, instead of when it fails.” I spoke my mind and by the
time I was done I was confident they would never invite me back.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
In October of 2008, the Governor’s office
called with an invitation for dinner at the
official residence in Lansing. I pulled up to
the iron gates in the dark of an
unassuming, ultra-modern dwelling and
was asked to state my name by security
into an intercom. A guard met me at my
car and led me to the mammoth red front
door, opened by the First Gentleman.

17. They called me back that week and I would return to the Governor’s residence and capitol offices many times in
the next year. Over 10 million jobs had been lost overnight—with Michigan the hardest hit. Everyone in the state
was trying to figure out how to create jobs. The answer was obvious to me: women were starting businesses at
twice the rate of men, When 70% of all new jobs come from small businesses, connecting women with capital to
start and grow businesses was job #1.
At the Governor’s request, my team worked for months to come up with CONNECTING TO SUCCESS, bringing
together public and private organizations to connect women to billions of private equity. I started using all my
personal connections to call up all the VC and angel investors I knew to ask them personally to participate in my
mission. Getting them to get behind a government-sponsored initiative was almost insurmountable—but I did.
“Kim, you continue to be an
inspiration to us all… under
Governor Granholm’s leadership.”
Lisa Danscok, VP MEDC
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

18. It was early spring when I drove to Kalamazoo to meet with my first investor contact. Intoxicated by the beauty
of orchards in bloom I missed my exit and arrived late. He was gracious as I told him women owned 48% of all
businesses and were starting businesses at twice the rate of men, yet only received 4% of all private equity to
start and grow those businesses. As a result, only 3% of women-owned businesses had annual revenues of a
million dollars.
It was my strategy to look him in
the eye from across his desk
and ask him why he wasn’t
investing in women-owned
businesses. I wasn’t prepared
for his answer.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
He was as shocked as I about the 4% statistic.
He told me the problem wasn’t a conscious
decision on his part to not invest in women-
owned businesses; the problem was, women
weren’t asking him for money. They weren’t
even pitching him. I asked him, “If I vet and
qualify women entrepreneurs to pitch you,
will you come—and will you bring your
money?” He answered "Yes. Just make it
about money—not about women.”

19. IWith this one investor I realized I had some of the smartest money in the country
enthusiastically behind me. I started calling other connections. I had $100 million
lined up in three phone calls
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
was back in the Governor’s office for a final meeting. Our part of the deal was
done; we needed $1.8 million to manage the infrastructure necessary to
connect the $100 million with women entrepreneurs. The Governor’s staff
rushed from the capital building across the street to our meeting. The grounds
were covered with news trucks running live satellite feeds from every station
in the state.
There was bare-knuckled debate going on on the floor as the national
economic crisis was creating catastrophic budget shortfalls for states dealing
with historic levels of unemployment, foreclosures, corporate bankruptcies
and bail-outs. The writing was on the wall: Governor Granholm was a lame
duck, budgets were being slashed, and Lansing was embroiled in all-out
partisan infighting. This deal was dead but I wasn’t about to let my dream die.

20. I realized the solution to this mess was never going to come from Washington, or Wall
Street. I had invested so much precious time and resources into my dream of connecting
women with capital—without a dollar in return—that I decided to go all in. I was
spreading my time between being a mom to my two boys, one autistic, and trying to run
my own companies in a business environment in total meltdown. It would have
probably driven anyone else to give up, and I asked myself frequently if I should. My
boys always answered that question with a resounding ‘NO.”
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
Every one of my national retail accounts went bankrupt and closed.
The retail industry went into crisis and shut down, freezing new buying indefinitely.
The credit markets disappeared overnight, making it impossible to carry 180 day
manufacturing runs out of China like I had been.
My father died.
I decided it was time to start that media company everyone wanted, but this time
without investors or loans.
It. Was. Not. Easy.
But things were going to get much worse before they got better. When the
bottom fell out of Wall Street, it fell out of my business, and millions of other
businesses across America.

21. At times of historic change comes historic opportunity, and I was all about opportunity. What I feared from the
beginning had become reality: the vertical revenues dried up before the licensing revenues replaced them.
Everyone was reinventing themselves so I did, too. I went to the mat with my investors and fiercely negotiated
the buy-back of my company Green Daisy, assuming all the debt in return.
I was back in New York on business. The licensing model my
CEO had envisioned had become a reality. We had just
launched a new home décor line in New York’s premiere
showplace on Fifth Avenue. My Creative Director and I were
invited to celebrate with my Editor and her (rabbi, Vietnam
veteran, Wall Street attorney) husband at the Yale Club.
I
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
t was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. The
conversation over dinner that evening at the Yale Club will
be forever memorable. My Editor convinced me that
Hollywood was the place to be, and she had just the agent to
take me there. At her urging I signed with him, and within
months I was putting together a production deal and new
book deal, certain they would make my dream of connecting
women with capital a reality.

22. I checked into the Andaz Hotel on Sunset and looked out from the rooftop pool over the Hollywood hills; they had lost
my reservation, it was late so they ‘comped’ me an upgrade to a suite where Robert Plant reportedly stayed during the
heyday of Led Zeppelin, with pictures of them riding in on motorcycles adorning the walls. Looking down Sunset
Boulevard at night from the rooftop pool, with Tom Petty singing “the future was wide open” in the background, I was
totally swept away by Hollywood glamour.
We had a half dozen meetings, including the biggest production company in the world. This show was going to be about
people raising angel capital; the VP I pitched said “just tell me you open suitcases till you win a million dollars.” The next
day we met in Santa Monica with one of the biggest hit-makers on TV. The Managing Partner told me what a fan her
sister was of my book. They got my concept and we were on the same page when it came to developing it. I told her that
as long as we worked together for the greatest good of all parties, we couldn’t help but succeed. I was right.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

23. This time I stayed at the Hollywood Roosevelt, eating my breakfast of granola and fresh
fruit next to the David Hockney pool, as I went over our busy pitch schedule for the day.
I met my team members at CBS. We were pitching a top exec when the talk turned to
401k’s, the economy, and the disastrous real estate market in LA. People had lost
everything, including top executives. He asked me if I wanted to be on ‘Survivor,’ and I
said no. We had a dozen meetings lined up, and the next was with Oprah Winfrey’s new
network OWN. They were just launching and everybody in Hollywood was standing in
line to make a deal; after months of meetings, we would be the first. We got a green
light and everybody I knew suddenly wanted to be my friend. The deal died in
negotiation and all my new friends disappeared. We could have taken the deal, but it
could have been the end of my dream. I wasn’t putting fame before fortune—or
history.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
We worked for months producing a
sizzle reel for the show, writing, casting,
filming, and then to my surprise,
summarizing it all in a PowerPoint
presentation. Forget about all the
glamour, this was big business, and in
Hollywood there were no barriers to
entry—as long as you had a dream.
This time I stayed

24. I was back in New York to meet with the world’s biggest advertiser and I needed to find a publicist to turn my
dream into THE NEXT BIG DREAM. I called my Editor; she had two recommendations: Rosemarie Terenzio and
Gregg Sullivan. I called Gregg and he was on fire with passion for my NEXT BIG DREAM; he took the train in and
met us at Aquavit on E 55th.
Before he arrived I got the PAGE 6 gossip from my Editor about the feud between her and Liz Smith. “Didn’t she
know that anything said at FREDERIC FEKKAI in the early hours reserved for private clients was off the record?”
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
I returned to my hotel just as Rosemarie
Terenzio called. My heart skipped a beat when
she said she was JFK Jr’s personal assistant until
CAMELOT was INTERRUPTED. I couldn’t believe
she wanted to work with me on THE NEXT BIG
DREAM. But we had crossed wires; she was
planning on meeting the next day and I was
planning on leaving. It was one of those
moments my Editor would call “beyond
coincidence.” Instead she would go on to write
a blockbuster bestseller about the young man
whom I could tell in her voice she still dearly
loved and mourned

25. I told him I was putting together a Private Equity Summit designed
to connect women with capital. He asked me when it was and how
much money he should bring with him. He gave me his card and
told me to follow up with the details, and he would make sure all
his associates would attend as well. He told me to bring it to Israel,
because there was a lot of money and a lot of deals being made
with women. He offered me the same advice I had heard almost
word-for-word before: “Don’t make this about women. Make this
about money.”
I felt like I hit another dead end and I needed a call from my kids to
tell me to “Suck it up!” Instead we decided to stop at the Plaza
Hotel to see if we could grab a cup of tea. The dining room was
packed so we went back outside to survey our options from the
incomparable vantage point of the hotel’s front steps.
Our meeting was shattered by a bomb drill in a building just blocks from Times Square where a real
bomb had been left weeks before. There was a family visiting from Israel waiting for a cab, and we fell
into casual conversation. Originally from New York, he was a venture capitalist visiting on business.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

26. WHAT DO INVESTORS REALLY WANT? Find out in this interview with Terry
Cross at my Private Equity Summit kick-off at my H.O.M.E. Office.
I had just shown my proprietary blueprints for a ground-breaking digital media project it
took me a year to build at immeasurable cost to potential competitors in meetings in New
York. I didn’t want to wake up one day to see someone else calling MY BIG DREAM theirs,
so I decided to hold my own PRIVATE EQUITY SUMMIT.
A lack of patience is probably one of my biggest character flaws.
My passion can also sometimes make me come on too strong.
At this point, I had an overabundance of both.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
In late January, in the midst of a blizzard, I tested the waters by
hosting a kick-off at my H.O.M.E. office in Grand Haven,
Michigan, a small venue in a small town, where dozens of women
entrepreneurs from across the U.S. and Canada came to pitch
real investors. I hadn’t seen media frenzy that we attracted since
the launch of MOMMY MILLIONAIRE, but I was in for another
paradigm shift.

27. I put together pitch criteria for the event and an application process online. With almost no
marketing behind it, I had dozens of women from around the U.S. and Canada in just days who
wanted to pitch
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰
We gave everyone two minutes in an actual
elevator. My brightest star of the evening was
already doing a million in sales annually on her
product at top retailers around the world—out
of her garage. She was a lawyer, graduated
Summa Cum Laude; even though I prepped her
to dream big, the bottom of my stomach fell
out when she asked for $45,000 in funding.
How did I fix that?

28. How To Shift a Paradigm
• Break down conventional wisdom that investors are
only interested in high-tech ventures.
• Take networking opportunities out of Silicon Valley,
boardrooms and "old boys clubs.”
• Teach women how to package and drive a deal.
• Elevate women’s business funding from a charitable
subsistence model to one of exponential financial
return.
• Vet and qualify women to be money-ready
investments, then empower them to be leaders in the
boardroom.
• But the most difficult and most important paradigm
shift is teaching women to think they can.
I was on the top of the Empire State Building, overwhelmed by the task at hand. I put my personal
reputation on the line to enlist investors from around the world to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to
this event, so there had better be fast-growth, high-profit women-owned businesses “money-ready”
pitching. The problem wasn’t the investors, the problem was with the women: they didn’t know how to ask
for the money, they didn’t know how to drive a deal, they didn’t think investors were interested in their
business models, they didn’t know how to frame a Value Proposition—and they didn’t think they could.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

29. I bumped into one of the organizers of this TED event
and asked him what he thought would happen if you
plugged TED into a $100 million of investor capital. He
eagerly answered that he wanted to know more. I had
the same response from event speaker Lisa Gansky,
who as a rare woman in the tech field had raised
millions years ago before selling her company to Kodak.
The smartest and most successful investors are the ones
who can discern a needle of opportunity in a haystack of
mundane moments that make up any normal business
day—then act on it with haste. I was beginning to
realize that some people just could not see the
opportunity, unless they were a “crazy person, or a
person with vision.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that “Innovation never comes from the establishment. It comes from a
graduate student, a crazy person, or a person with vision." I was about to meet some of those people at
TED @MotorCity.
I was coming off a high generated by the spectacular media success of my modest Summit just weeks
before. I arrived slightly late and had to wait to be seated during an intermission between speakers
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

30. But THE NEXT BIG DREAM was about to get exponentially bigger. And so were the challenges, when we put
together meetings in New York with some of the world’s biggest banks.
At another meeting I was speechless when he said he would come, but only if I could put together 10
women asking for a minimum of $10 million each. This was really smart money and I couldn’t disappoint
him, but I asked myself how I could possibly vet and qualify the 10 women worth $10 million each when I
couldn’t even find one.
We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria and the OCCUPY
movement was in full swing. There were protesters
in the street with bullhorns and banners and a news
team was filming them as we entered the building.
Security was tight and we were escorted
up to offices high above the street where we looked
down on the protestors. They were so loud, their
voices carried over our meeting and our hosts
apologized for the intrusion. What they said next
stunned me: a percentage of billions in public funds
they managed was earmarked for investment in
women and minority-owned businesses, and there
was more money than there were businesses. But
there was more to follow.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

31. Free market capitalism was the only solution and some people were giving it a bad name. Somewhere in-
between Wall Street and Occupy New York was the truth—and that truth was Angel Investors, who were
pumping over $20 billion a year into early or first-round financing for emerging companies, with that amount
growing by over 20% a year. I could understand the anger of the Occupy protesters, but I could not
understand what they wanted. This was America, land of the free and home of the brave, and from where I
was standing, it looked like a tinderbox full of money ready to explode.
Even in the midst of these historic times,
America is an embarrassment of riches, a
melting pot of freedom and democracy and
money that makes this the greatest country
on the face of the earth to start a business.
This new reality wasn’t easy, but it was the
cure, and entrepreneurs—not protesters—
were the heroes, taking on personal risk today
to create the
wealth and employment opportunities
for millions tomorrow. A new class of
Super Angels were being born, using
feet on the street to snap up deals,
and one of the smartest guys in the
room confided in me off the record
that he thought Wall Street would
become irrelevant in our lifetimes.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

32. Who knows how long this train of investor money is going to be around before it leaves the station? We are
living in historic times, which we’ll look back on as being as influential in transforming America’s future as the
Industrial Revolution—but this time it will be the Women’s Revolution. This isn’t just happening in the U.S., it’s
happening in every country in the world. According to statistics from the World Bank, women are leading a
global economic revolution—and the only piece that is missing is the capital. Missing this window of opportunity
could cost a generation of women their opportunity to start billion dollar companies, and millions of men the
investment and employment opportunities they create.
Crowd-funding was the newest phenomenon,
but it was a temporary solution to a Big
Problem: Raising capital was the most important
job any entrepreneur had and nobody was
teaching anyone how to do it—until now.
The forecasted growth of women-owned
companies from 48% to 55% over the next 4 years
is a powerful phenomenon that will rewrite the
American cultural landscape, changing work and
family life in revolutionary ways.
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

33. It was the holidays, a time for family
and friends and love and laughter. I
started putting all the pieces
together and reflecting on the
journey. We had climbed a mountain,
but everywhere I looked were new
peaks to scale. I’ve never made
anything happen by following rules,
and not following rules has proven to
be an effective strategy. I've never
worked harder, traveled further, dug
deeper, dreamt bigger, risked more
for so many--on a dream.
It would have been so much easier to just give up, or give in. Who did I think I was to show up at these places and ask these
people to join me in my dream and dare them to tell me 'no?’ Maybe I wasn’t the best person for the job, but I was the only
person willing to do it. I looked at my 15 year old son from across a dinner table; he told me after watching what I had been
through he would never do it. He said I was his hero because I followed my dreams. I had sacrificed so much financially to
get here, but at that moment I felt like the luckiest person in the world. Money is just the machinery that makes ideas work.
The person and their dream is the commodity worth millions. This is the story of that dream and history being made
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰

34. K I M L A V I N E
۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰ ۰