Denise Porcaro, Flower Girl, Woman Entrepreneur
I hear from many women that not enough women get funding and how can we change that. The data I'd like to see is how many men pitch VC's on their business vs how many women pitch VC's on their business. Out of those two groups what percentage get funded. That would be a worthy statistic. I was thinking about that the other night when I went to see the pitches at Startl. There were a few businesses that were being pitched by entrepreneurs, all men, who had worked a serious amount of time on and I can't imagine them getting funded. So how many men do not get funded is a worthy question.
Statisically I have read that there are more women entrepreneurs than men. Many of these women have life style businesses. They have forged out on their own creating something that they are passionate about that fuels their life style. Denise Porcaro is one of those women.
A born and bred New York girl who grew up in Queens. Her parents were divorced when she was young so as she puts it she had the the best of both worlds. She spent the week pounding the pavement in the city with her Mom and the weekends running through the grass in Massapequa with her Dad. Her mother is a teacher and has taught K-6 and her father is an entrepreneur who built his own construction business. Watching the ins and outs of his business over the years was educational.
After graduating she found herself getting small jobs here and there on films but paying the rent by hosting at Patria and helping open 11 Madison. She left for a job at The Park where she was working at the bar and also helping them do floral arrangements. Working with a guy who was almost into his 40's still trying to break into film and bartend at the same time hit her between the eyes. She decided to bag the film route and concentrate on on what she was really enjoying which was the flowers.
She went to work for Roberta Bendavid who does all the flowers for Danny Meyers restaurants. She knew her from being at 11 Madison. She wanted to learn the business. She wasn't making enough cash to support herself at Roberta's so she went back to the Park to make some money on the side. The owners, Sean and Eric, were about to open the Maritime Hotel and asked Denise if she wanted to run the floral kiosk they were building there. It was the perfect start.
Denise did the flowers for the Maritime as well as private events. People started to come to her through word of mouth. She was able to start up her business in a safe space and once she realized what she had created she hired an assistant to help with all the parties she was landing and became a LLC naming herself Flower Girl.
She dove into the flower business and started to look for a space of her own. Ernest Sewn asked Denise to do a flower shop for them in their 90 Broome location. They wanted to create a certain look and feel so they bartered for space. She does their flowers and she gets the space. A shop within a shop.
That move helped her business explode. Now she has a staff to help with the variety of private clients including the events that they do from Kate Spade to Cole Haan. The business reflects her passion and desire to be an independent business woman who is loving what she does every day. And her flower arrangements…beautiful!
Comments (Archived):
Love learning about Denise. Way to build a business around something you know and can deliver.You mentioned this male/female pitching thing. I had an interesting a-ha moment this weekend, about friends + family money, in a conv with a close friend. I call it “A Tale of Two Weekends”. Sorry it’s insanely long. I need to blog it.You have a guy and a girl. They went to the same college. She was in a sorority, he was in a fraternity. They both got MBAs.Over time, he’d invested small amounts in his friends’ businesses. She was never asked to invest in friends’ businesses, never did, and spent money paying off school debt and then on nice clothes so she could trap a nice husband, and then she paid the lion’s share of her wedding and downpayment for a house.Fast forward 20+ years. Both the guy and the girl, who’ve been working around startups for a bunch of years, are each ready to strike out on their own. They talk about their businesses and share advice.She goes on a ‘girls weekend’ with her BFFs to the beach at a moment when she was just starting fundraising, had some positive press in a major pub, on top of the world. Of the girlfriends, two run hedge funds, very conservative. One is a marketing maven with no spare cash (she’s the other entrepreneur’s wife), one is a divorced reporter who can’t make ends meet but has custody of the 2 kids, and one’s husband is out of work and depressed, so she’s carrying the family finances (and their 4 kids). Needless to say not everyone could pay for the weekend so the birthday girl covered the two cash-strapped ones on her credit card, so they could be together. Lots of talk of the new business. The weekend ends with no offers of ‘friends’ money; the hedge fund gals say they don’t mix friendship with money. She slogs for the next few months and picks up a few small checks from former bosses. They’re smart people but no-name investors. She builds it lean, but excruciatingly slow. Hard to drive momentum in the smoke-and-mirrors world of consumer web.A few months later, the guy goes on a ski weekend with his frat brothers. His startup is capital intensive, he needs a lot to get off the ground, ~$2m of seed. Fun and sun on the slopes, and by Sunday night, he’s fully funded. On Monday, he calls a more distant friend who’s in VC, and he says he’ll take over the round so he can put in more later down the line. He’s off to the races, renting an office, hiring people, and now is on the prowl to acquire businesses (in an M&A play). Does he deserve it? Hell yeah. He’s very smart, experienced, and works his butt off, and it’s an interesting market opportunity.A really interesting, real-life juxtaposition. What to do?For guys, “friends” is a lucrative, accessible funding channel.I think broadly speaking, for women, there’s not a lot of “friends” funding going on. They just don’t have the wallets, or are uber-conservative. Many also think it’s rude to make the ask. If she’s lucky, she has access to the “family” wallet, via parents, husband or rich uncle. And it’s a bit awkward to ask the friend’s husband. Just seems….not serious, and yet, entangled.
this is a great comment tereza.just playing devil’s advocate here. i’d like to know, obviously, what thebusinesses were.here is another thing although i might get blasted for putting this outthere. i know so many interesting smart women through the tech world and ibelieve that any of them if they had the means would invest in start-ups.my personal friends, particularly the ones that have the pockets for this,most have no understanding of these businesses. it scares them to invest.it is a huge risk, they are intrigued by these businesses but not so surethey actually have a deep down fundamental understanding of them which ibelieve most women like to have before they make that leap.most men i know through the tech world certainly would invest too if theyhave the pockets. the men that i know through my personal life would havemore of a mentality to make the leap because most feel that they arecomfortable in that setting (as an investor) even though they might notreally understand the biz they pretend that they do. they feel morecomfortable not fully understanding the biz but taking a leap of faith b/cthey believe they get business. does that make sense?that is purely my own personal experiences. a few of my girlfriends havebeen interested in investing in a few companies that they use so theyunderstand the value. what is unfortunate that her two friends that runhedge funds didn’t have the balls as really good friends to take some moneyand invest in a good friend. it could expand their minds and perhaps theycould make a difference in their friends life…and if they lost some cash,so be it. life is about taking risks.personally i have given money to one of my best friends who lost all of itin his business. alas. he is a better person for it and i am a betterinvestor.
Joanne, If any of your friends are interested in investing in internet companies, I am working on something I think they would totally understand and be very interested in. It’s something that has come from a trend I noticed and feedback on my current venture. I would be more than happy to discuss it with them. 🙂
None of them are pursuing being an investor. Just talking to them aboutstuff I was doing got some interest
I think everything you say is true.And of course his and her businesses are, in real life, truly apples/oranges.Her business is a damn cool web and mobile Q+A device for women and men age 30-50. They ask smart questions they need to solve in their daily lives. Friends vote anonymously and Pros give great advice for free. It’s like Quora meets Hot or Not with a dash of Dancing With The Stars. Users (called ‘souls’, not users) say: “it’s like crack…in a good way!” High risk business, low capital.His is a consolidation play in local delivery of non-human health services (sorry I need to be circumspect here). A simple, brilliant play though and he totally deserves success. Relatively low risk, high capital. I’m pretty sure, since I’ve met them, that his buds are not experts in ‘non-human health services’.His wife, my very dear friend (and now, apparently, one of my few remaining friends, LOL) and b-school classmate, planned my 40th birthday weekend. She made this anthropological observation: “WTF! Talk about night and day. Girl friends don’t do sh*t!”.Her words, not mine. We laughed hard, together.What else can you do?Onward ho….to find other ways. There are always other ways.But to me the moral of the story is, the notion that a ‘friends’ funding route exists for gals is BS. They flirt but they almost never take that leap of faith.And why I must get out there and make disgusting gobs of money. To fix this craziness!!!
Agreed. Its not all about friends and family
Very interesting thread here. I have a tech start-up and have bootstrapped to date but intend to leapfrog over friends and family funding and go right to angel funding shortly. I’ve opted not to pursue friends & family funding precisely because, as Tereza mentions, I don’t want to mix biz/$$/f&f. I know other women entrepreneurs who’ve been successfully funded who have done the same.Curious to get feedback here on this. It makes perfect sense to me, but I’ve heard on the con side that (a) it looks like you don’t believe in your biz if you’re not willing to tap your nearest and dearest; (b) it looks like they don’t believe in you, if they’re not writing checks; and (c) some angels view a certain level of f&f funding as requisite for investing.For the record, a and b couldn’t be farther from the truth — c I’d like to know more about. Discuss por favor …
Angels like to see friends and family invest. It says something. Even whenVCs raise capital the big investors want friends and family in the mix.If you have a friend who believes in your business and can provide goodadvice then you should ask them to invest
OK — thanks, Joanne. Looks like I may need to rethink this. Appreciate the feedback.
@Joanne — or anybody else out there — do you think the prejudices that I mentioned against those who chose to forego f&f $$ exist? Enough so that I should consider rethinking my plan? My gut’s telling me that I’m doing what’s right for me, but I’m always interested in hearing the flipside. Thanks!
Tereza, you hit the nail on the head with this. I don’t think that every great friend with deep pockets should fund every friend with a dream, but there is definitely a gap when it comes to guys and girls and the “Friends & Family” funding. My brother would have a much easier time raising capital for an internet company with his frat brothers and with the family even though he is nowhere near the space.I do believe women should do, prove, and achieve instead of complain though. It’s this initial capital that is the hardest I think for women to raise. It is frustrating. Although I find VCs and angels willing to listen to everything I have to say, so it’s really overcoming that first funding obstacle and then proving yourself. And I do think that first funding obstacle is the most challenging, for both men and women.On a side note, I read recently too that a staggering number of women don’t negotiate their first salaries. Crazy.
They don’t negotiate their first salaries? Wow. I’m so bummed to hearthat
http://to.pbs.org/ervM71 I’m rushing out or would find a better link, but this is what I could find quickly. It’s really sad. My little sister’s friend just graduated from college and was staying with me and got her first job in New York. I made her try to negotiate her first salary. She was ultimately denied, but I think there is value in the process.
you only learn from your mistakes.
The professor is Linda Babcock, her first book is called Women Don’t Ask.http://www.womendontask.com…Then she went onto research more about what we can do to make society more accepting of women who ask! LOL.One step at a time, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Complaining is non-productive but i thought it was worth calling out as we try to deconstruct what’s going on.What I have found is that former bosses are a great source and it’s where every woman should start first.I’ve actually met the professor who researched that stat on women not negotiating that first salary. She’s at Carnegie Mellon, and she actually did an eye-opening follow-up bit of research.She researched, of the women who HAD asked for the raise from the get-go, what the new boss perceived of her (compared to guys that did the same thing).The answer? The guys were perceived more favorably afterward. The women were perceived less favorably (e.g. troublesome nags or bitches) and wound up staying for a shorter time in the job. So, interestingly, the prof adjusted her conclusions later. The women were definitely perceiving something that was going on for real and it wasn’t clear that asking for the raise was beneficial. I’ll have to dig it up but I remember almost falling over when i heard that one.Crazy crazy!
I wonder if that is changing as each new group of recent women collegegraduates enter the fold? maybe not so much in the corporate world but alot in the start-up world. I have to imagine that it is a differentexperience
I hope it’s changing but I’m not optimistic. College is crazy expensive and they’re saddled w debt in their 20’s unless their parents funded college outright or they hit it big with their own startup.They’re more likely to have money for this type of investing in their 30’s/40’s but at that point there is usually a husband in the picture, kids and all the expenses that come with that. With the husband there’s often a ‘it’s not my money it’s my husband’s money’ or ‘it’s my family’s money’.For people who aren’t wealthy it feels like it’s money that comes out of family or home expenses. (eg you do the cheap preschool instead of the expensive private one and hold off on landscaping your house or delay the roof repair).Also typically i’ve found (please people don’t cone after me with pitchforks) that a stay-at-home mom wants to use that pocket of fun money, if she has it, to fund her own dream not someone else’s. And i get it! I also had a few who said they’d fund if I ’employ’ them, as their on-ramp. For the right person it could work but in that situation I felt it high risk and a possibly destructive entanglement.
That is so depressing!
That’s why we’ve got to stick together, sistah, and encourage each other to ask.
sorry.
I hope that does not deter women from negotiating their salaries.
Interesting comment Tereza…this reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a colleague about how women tend to view their various networks as separate and distinct from one another – friend, family, business, etc. – whereas men view it as one network. Personally, it seems shortsighted to me to view them separately!
Tereza- I have thought about this further and have to add to what I’m saying. While I do think men might have an easier time with friend funding, I have not had a difficult time having my friends offer me capital. I have definitely received offers from both men and women friends on different ventures. My problem is that when a friend says “I would like to invest” I analyze the risk as more than just a financial one. I have definitely not pursued some offers like this because of fear of losing a friendship in case of a failed venture. I’m not sure if that is a “Me” problem or a “Woman” problem. I’ve had 3 offers in the past 24 hours from both men and women. A man might already have had the checks deposited by now… that might be the difference.
I also am not sure how much is me versus women. But I know I have a pretty good network. And I know i’ve had women friends offer but then never follow up with a check. And like you I’ve questioned whether I wanted a particular friend’s money, due either to it undermining the friendship or just knowing that it would be complicated and probably not worth the headache.But my sense is that men get some joy from being ‘in on it’. Women view it as a chore and a risk. So right now my five angel investors are all men! I call them “men who love women” (of course this statement has nothing to do with sexual orientation). At any rate, I love ’em and greatly appreciate they took the leap of faith. Just need more of them, that’s all!Kelly my fingers are crossed that those checks are deposited. You go, girl!!!!!!
“Men who love women” LOL. I can’t wait til’ we chat in person about that one. Thanks for the kind words! Will keep you updated. Things are looking great.
Denise- You have what most people dream of. Having their own business, doing what you love, working with really cool trend-setters, and having an exploding business. I’m sure your path to get to be the Flower Girl had some thorns and to me this was one of the most interesting stories thus far, really for what I imagine is in between these lines. Congrats to you. I’m not sure if you are into writing, but sounds like you could have a fantastic book or blog on your hands.
Thanks so much! We ARE blogging (as of Tuesday that is… ha!) Please follow us!! http://flowergirlnyc.tumblr… Thanks for the supportive words.
nice tumblr. i’m following!
Awesome! Will do!