Bad Girl Ventures is an educational and micro-finance organization dedicated to inspiring and supporting women entrepreneurs in all the key elements of their business. BGV enables female entrepreneurs to build and sustain well managed, profitable businesses through guidance, education and access to capital.

Why we do it...

While women make up 60% of the US population and earn 60% of all bachelor degrees, Ohio has struggled to find women to lead startup companies. This is not because women lack the ideas or the capacity. Women simply have a more difficult time finding financing.  In fact, although women own 50% of all privately held companies, they have access to only 5% of traditional capital. Bad Girl Ventures is intended to be a highly localized micro-lending organization focused on woman-owned startups to address this disparity.

How we do it...

Bad Girl Ventures combines micro-lending with a nine week business development course. Each three hour class is taught successful business owners and professionals from the local community with in-depth experience in their fields. Each class consists of a two hour classroom session followed by a one hour one-on-one coaching session where experts in the industry spend time answering questions in a "speed date" type setting. Each nine week course is held two to three times a year.

Businesses can choose to participate as a student or a finalist.

Finalist

As a finalist, you will attend the nine week business essentials course on scholarship and compete against 9 other women owned businesses in order to win a $25,000 loan. Finalists must participate in the application process and meet the following requirements:

• majority women owned business
• in business for 5 years or less
• need for a $25,000 low interest loan
• attendance at and full completion of the nine week course

After reviewing all applications submitted, a group of semi-finalist applicants are selected to participate in interviews. Then 10 are selected as finalists to attend the program on scholarship.

Each finalist is paired with a SCORE counselor to mentor her throughout the program and is expected to complete and submit by the end of the course, a homework assignment for each class, a business plan, a marketing plan, 3 year financial projections, and a SBA loan application.

At the end of the course each finalist will present to the selection committee who will determine who receives the $25,000 loan. The loan is awarded at a graduation celebrating the completion of the course.

Student

Any business owner or entrepreneur, female or male, is invited to attend an entire course or attend any individual class al la carte. Student participants are provided with classroom instruction, participation in the one-on-one coaching sessions, homework, and class materials for each class he or she attends.