Amy Millman
President, Springboard Enterprises

Born June 1954 in Brooklyn, New York.

For more than a decade, Amy Millman has been president and principal advocate of Springboard Enterprises—the premier venture-catalyst platform for building women-led businesses. Springboard Enterprises educates, sources, coaches, showcases, and supports high-growth, women-owned firms seeking equity capital for expansion. Under Ms. Millman’s leadership, Springboard has helped more than 400 women-led companies raise more than $5 billion in equity financing, including eight IPOs, and legions of high-value mergers and acquisitions. More than 80 percent of Springboard companies are still in business, generating $4 billion in revenues and creating tens of thousands new jobs.

In 2000, Ms. Millman became one of the founders of the Springboard Venture Forum program which defined the organization’s strategic direction. At the organization’s venture forums, 20 to 25 women-led, high-growth enterprises showcase their business opportunities to venture investors. Springboard holds educational programs in cities throughout the US, introducing women entrepreneurs to equity capital and strategies that enable them to build high-growth businesses. Backed by Ms. Millman’s relationship-building expertise, these two components have expanded the organization’s strategic direction.

Prior to Springboard, Amy Millman spent seven years as the executive director of the National Women’s Business Council, the federal commission on women’s business ownership. The Council was instrumental in some of the earliest women-led business initiatives including passage of the 1995 legislation that established a federal contracting goal for women-owned businesses and access to capital initiatives to increase the flow of both debt and equity to women entrepreneurs.

Ms. Millman began her career as a researcher for Congressional Quarterly Inc. and worked as legislative analyst for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). She was also a lobbyist for both Philip Morris and the American Trucking Associations.

Ms. Millman earned a bachelor’s degree in history and law from Carnegie Mellon University in 1976 and a master’s degree in public administration from The George Washington University School of Business and Public Administration in 1979.

Elizabeth Ghaffari: Were there entrepreneurs in your family?

Amy Millman: I suppose you could point to my grandparents who came from Europe in the 1880s. They were pushcart peddlers in Manhattan, so I guess you could call them entrepreneurial, although it wasn’t their choice—it was the only option to make money to live on.

The view back then was, “Get a good education, a job where hopefully you could stay for thirty years, have a nice family, and live the American dream.” My father was a printing supplies salesman. After I was old enough, my mother went back to work for Nassau County New York Social Services as a records management supervisor. It was just a way to help pay the bills. Her real passion was to run a boutique clothing store—something she had done after graduating from high school. Much later, after she retired, she moved down to Washington to be with me, and we got her a job working with a friend who opened a clothing store. It was pretty exciting for her. She really loved it.

Ghaffari: What attracted you to Carnegie Mellon University?

Millman: There was no way that I would have picked that school, myself. My father decided that that was where he wanted me to go. My father worshipped his older brother. So when my uncle’s granddaughter, my cousin, went there, my father decided that that’s where he wanted me to go.

I wanted to go somewhere other than New York, so I thought, “Why not? This seems like an exotic and interesting change of pace.” It was a pretty prestigious school, and I got in. Little did I know that going there would result in a complete change in my whole focus and perception of my career and beliefs.

If I had chosen, for myself, I would have pursued a political science major or something similar because that was my orientation. But Carnegie Mellon had no major like that—everything was very quantitative.

In Pittsburgh, at Carnegie Mellon University, I learned all about profit motives and business and thinking differently from what I’d been brought up to believe. That’s were I learned that there could be an entrepreneurial option in my career.

Ghaffari: How did you come to Washington, DC?

Millman: I had done an internship on Capitol Hill during my junior year. Right then, I realized, “This is where I want to be.” It was such an information cornucopia. I just loved the city. As soon as I graduated, I hopped on a train and came to Washington.

The first day I landed in town, I got a job through a placement agency working for a super law firm that needed a very, very junior admin person. I thought, “How perfect. I’ll take this job and go to law school in the fall. Maybe, I can even get them to pay for my law school.”

Unfortunately, it was the worst job experience. In law firms, if you’re not an associate, there is little chance that you’ll work on cases. I was a first-year assistant paralegal, not even a paralegal, and didn’t understand my position in the firm. I thought they’d actually assign me to a case after the first month or so. That was a little delusional, even for a twenty-two-year-old.

After the first month, I went to my supervisor and said, “Okay, I’m ready to be assigned to a case.” They laughed and gave me one in which I spent a month copying tens of thousands of Japanese language documents at another law firm involved with the case because we had to make sure that both firms had the same documents. After the month was over and the copying was finished, I came back, handed them my key and left.

Ghaffari: What did you learn from that experience?

Millman: I realized they weren’t going make me a lawyer or an associate just because I wanted to be one. Another important thing that really hit me was the fact that there were two hundred lawyers in the firm and one woman partner. She practically slept in her office. I didn’t really understand the issue of workaholism at the time. Today, I embrace it. I’m fine with it. But back then I just didn’t get it. She had been there seven years already. I realize now that that woman worked 24/7 because in those days—the 1970s—she still had a lot to prove. It probably seemed like pushing a rock up a mountain—one woman partner in a law firm of two hundred. I couldn’t relate to her struggle, so I decided to seek my fortune elsewhere.

In those days, I was more into finding myself and learning about life, meeting people, going out, and doing interesting things. So I sent out around five hundred résumés and got about four hundred and ninety-nine rejections until I got the job at a news service, Congressional Quarterly—using my quantitative-based education from CMU to provide our reporters with info on the voting behavior of members of Congress.

We called CQ “graduate school” because the reporters at CQ essentially wrote term papers for a living. My job was to prepare the charts for the daily votes of the members of Congress. I think I was hired because I knew how to operate the computer punch card machine, which I learned at CMU. Nobody else knew how to do it, so I got the job.

CMU was all about the numbers, quantifying and thinking about how to apply that knowledge. In the seventies, the whole world of computers in business was just starting up, and that orientation gave me an edge in the job market.

The job was in a wonderful location close to George Washington University, where I could live, work, and go to school at night. Rather than go to law school, I switched my major to a master’s in public administration because I was determined that my career path was government-related. So I went to school at night and worked during the day at Congressional Quarterly.

Ghaffari: What attracted you most about Washington?

Millman: There’s a difference between what I call Washington, DC, and “the rest of the world.” DC businesses are advocacy-related or focused on providing a service for the government. How you start and run a business in DC is very different from how the rest of the world thinks about businesses.

I’m comfortable as an advocate, so DC was a great place for me to plant. And my master’s degree gave me the credentials I needed to get my next job, working at the Department of Labor. I never would have gotten that job without a master’s degree. I worked in the legislative office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for about a year and a half.

It was the last year of the Carter administration which was interesting because the last year of any presidential administration is stressful, not knowing what the election results will be. Typically, political employees are in a race to make their mark on policy, and career employees are not really predisposed to do much that would have an impact because they assume it’s all going to get overturned when the new administration takes over.

The transition was even more disruptive because the leadership changed from Democrat to Republican, which meant a very different attitude about labor interests and occupational safety policy. That experience gave me insight into how government worked from the inside, the human frailties of managing an agency in transition, and a better awareness of why government isn’t as efficient as we’d like. It’s difficult to get anything done when our system dictates that we reinvent the wheel every four or eight years.

Ghaffari: What would you consider your noteworthy accomplishments while you were at OSHA?

Millman: A couple of things. I learned how to play squash. There was a squash court, and a bunch of people at the department got together regularly to play squash after work. You may not think that’s important except for the fact that, in Washington, the most important thing is how many people you know. Playing squash was another way of building relationships with people you needed to do business with.

The second thing I learned is how to write testimony—another really important skill to know in Washington. There’s a formula for that, as I learned from my OSHA bosses, who had been on Capitol Hill until their member of Congress retired. They were so knowledgeable about the process and taught me a lot.

I believe that you should look at every experience both as a participant and as an observer—figure out what skill or lesson you can learn from it to apply to the next situation. Every single person that I worked for has taught me a big lesson either positive or negative—things to emulate or to avoid. I also can point to a lesson or skill that I learned from each of the positions I held. I just wish I had been purposeful about this when I was younger.

Ghaffari: How did you get the lobbyist job at Philip Morris?

Millman: When it was clear that Carter had lost the election, my boss at OSHA said, “We’re all short-termers here, now. Here’s a list of head hunters—start sending your résumé around.” I did and soon got a call back, telling me, “I’m doing a search for a major corporation, and they’d like you to come for an interview.” The company was Philip Morris.

The company was based in New York City, which was great for me because I was born there and my mother still lived on Long Island. Ironically, I was a complete anti-smoker, but fascinated by the company which was being run by marketing and advertising guys. So I took the job.

Ghaffari: You helped guide Philip Morris’s contributions to women’s organizations and interests. Is that accurate?

Millman: Actually, it wasn’t so much that Philip Morris was interested in women or that the company decided to enter the women’s market and get them all to smoke. Rather, it was because many of the guys running the company had really powerful wives who were very interested in politics and sports and were very active in the women’s movement in New York. That’s probably how the company became involved with women’s tennis and sponsored the Virginia Slims tennis tournament. They were heavily involved with women’s political groups way before I came to work there.

As I was the only woman professional in the Philip Morris Washington office, I was the logical choice to work with the groups we sponsored. I was interested in the women’s political world and the pro-choice movement, so I grabbed the opportunity to get involved. We never marketed our products to these organizations or required them to promote the products—never. The company was a great corporate citizen.

Some of the organizations were reluctant to accept our money. It was difficult for them because it was “tobacco money.” They liked me personally because I would be really honest with them. I’d say, “Do not take this contribution if you feel that you will have difficulty with other donors or constituents because of it.”

Ghaffari: Did you meet a lot of interesting people in that experience?

Millman: It was a fabulous, ten-year experience. It was a great job. First, because they had all the resources in the world so you could do all kinds of amazing things. And, second, and the most important thing about the whole experience for me, my big takeaway, was learning that everything in life was really about building strong relationships. I learned that if you operate with high integrity and honesty, if people can trust you, if you genuinely help them and understand what they need to be successful—then you’ll be successful.

Ghaffari: Why did you decide to leave?

Millman: I’d been there ten years, and new leadership was coming in. I didn’t feel that it was the place for me anymore. It was time to see what I’d learned there and apply it elsewhere. A couple of my mentors reaffirmed that, saying, “It’s really time for you to move on. And here are some job options for you.”

Also, I had two children who were under the age of five then. It was getting a little difficult explaining that I worked for a tobacco company. The anti-smoking movement was picking up intensity in the schools at the time.

Personally, I never had any qualms about working for Philip Morris even though our products were alcohol, tobacco, and snack food. I had no problems with any of that. I never said anything that I didn’t believe or that wouldn’t pass the “sniff test.” I was always open and honest about what I was selling. But it was time to move on, so I took the lobbyist job at the American Trucking Association.

Ghaffari: Can you tell me more about the mentors in your career?

Millman: During my time at Philip Morris, I had two mentors—both prominent Republicans, interestingly enough.

Both were very gracious about trying to mentor me all those years. We’d get together on occasion. One day, they said, “Listen, there’s a job opening at the Trucking Association, and we think you are the right person for it. You should take it.” They stood to gain nothing from that. They probably realized that Philip Morris was no longer a good situation for me.

There is a very tight-knit group of people in Washington who are the heart and soul of the city. They make things run. And they look out for you and watch your back. Again, the whole town is about relationships.

Ghaffari: What was most memorable about your experience at the Trucking Association?

Millman: It was a great opportunity for me to spread my wings a little. I got to apply what I’d learned at Philip Morris and to try out some new things.

It’s like when you leave your family for the first time. Leaving your comfort zone, but feeling the excitement of a new adventure. I could say to myself, “Wait. I don’t have to think and do things the way I’ve always done them. I can think bigger, think more independently.” In doing that, you take on more risks. You learn more about what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. I gained a greater confidence in who I was and what my skills were.

Ghaffari: Was your position as a lobbyist high on the pecking order?

Millman: No, while there are hierarchies, most people in Washington operate on the same plane. Everybody is an advocate. You are differentiated by how bold and connected you are. You’re known by how many people you know and your success in making connections. This was a lateral move for me, but any job that I took would have been a lateral, unless I was running an office for somebody.

Ghaffari: How did you get appointed to the National Women’s Business Council?

Millman: This was another time of political transition. President Clinton had just won the election and at the time I was on the board of the Women’s Campaign Fund—a bipartisan, pro-choice, advocacy organization. Some of the board members who were also helping the “transition effort” approached me about a position in the new Administration running the National Women’s Business Council as executive director.

This was a big turning point in my career. I had never really run anything before, including a business. My strong suit was advocating policy positions. I didn’t know anything about running a business, and this position involved working with small businesses owned by women. I also didn’t know any women business owners at the time. But my recruiters were very interested in learning more about these women and their demographics, political affiliations, and what they needed for their businesses. They wanted to know more about women business owners and how to involve them in the women’s political world.

This was perfect for me because I was big into constituency-building. I interviewed and got the job. Then I discover that Congress hadn’t funded the Council in the budget and that soon it would “sunset”—be closed. I had just six months to turn this around. You would have thought that, as a seasoned lobbyist, I would have checked all that out before taking the job— but I didn’t.

Ghaffari: What did you do?

Millman: At the time, I had two young children, my husband had his own business, but I was the primary breadwinner of the family. My first reaction was to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

But then I thought about it and realized that, “Hey, this is a turnaround situation. I can do this.” That was sheer optimism talking. Next, I started talking to people about the Council. I soon realized that Congress had appointed all these women business owners from their districts to serve on this commission, but they were not a homogeneous group by any means. They weren’t working well together, and many of them had gone up to Capitol Hill to complain. Well, one thing I learned as a lobbyist is that men hate it when women complain because it then becomes a public problem for them. Their idea of dealing with problems is to get rid of it, not solve it. That is why the Council’s charter was scheduled to expire.

I appealed to a lot of people I’d known over the years, saying, “Listen—give me a little more time, and I will make this into a shining star.” First, we needed to draft new legislation to allow for a more diverse membership and, to give it more prominence, we asked the president to appoint the chairman. Next, we recruited women’s business organizations, in addition to individuals, to serve on the Council. Finally, with the support of the many women’s business organizations, we convinced Congress to reauthorize the Council, giving it a new lease on life. If I had learned anything over twelve years as a lobbyist, I knew how to build support for a legislative initiative and get it passed.

With the passage of the legislation and corresponding appropriation, we appointed a whole new group of members: five individuals and five organizations. The council has been reauthorized several times over the years and continues to do great work.

One of the major initiatives during my tenure was to establish a brain trust of about fifty women’s organizations who met to develop the policy agenda to support women’s business enterprise in the country. Every member organization and individual participated in creating the agenda and then interpreted that agenda for their membership. The collaboration of many organizations and having a presidential appointee on the Council added cachet and importance to our work.

We worked closely with the White House Women’s Office led by Betsy Myers, which enabled us to make women’s business ownership a topic for policy discussion at the White House. In addition to the research we funded and the initiatives we launched, we also created a “best practices” manual, which we were able to share with policy makers at the 2000 OECD¹ world meeting in Paris.

Ghaffari: What’s the most long-lasting performance indicator of this group—what made you the proudest?

Millman: There are so many achievements. People talk about the Council’s achievements to this day because they were an important part of the process. If you talk to anybody involved with the Council at that time, Republican or Democrat, they’ll say, “That was a moment when the stars aligned.” A lot of people were responsible for the success of the programs, initiatives, and policies. It was truly collaborative.

In particular, the research we conducted really put women entrepreneurs on the political map. We used census data supported by case studies. We brought successful women into the public eye. We talked about contracting and passed some of the first legislation that set goals for contracting opportunities for women-owned businesses. We focused on education programs for women business owners. We supported expansion of the women business centers around the country to serve the interests and needs of their communities and support local women in enterprise development, whether in impoverished rural towns or in big cities.

Today there are over one hundred and ten women business centers. There were only three or four when we started. The result—people finally began to believe that “women can run businesses.”

We served as advisors to the White House, Congress, and the Small Business Administration, and some of the recommendations and programs we launched were adopted by the SBA. However, many others were intended to be adopted by the private sector. For instance, we served as a catalyst for a women’s certification program, the Women’s Enterprise Business National Council, and for the Women’s Business Center program, which is supported by local clients, corporations, and state government within their communities. We were trying to create an infrastructure that wasn’t government-focused, but rather was private-sector driven. Springboard was also one of those initiatives.

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Ghaffari: How did Springboard Enterprises come about?

Millman: President Clinton chose Lillian Vernon, a very successful direct-marketing entrepreneur, to be the chair of the National Women’s Business Council. When her term was up, she suggested Kay Koplovitz as her replacement. Kay was named by Clinton and her catchphrase was, “We’re all about big businesses starting small.”

Kay was the founder and CEO of USA Network, a cable television network. She built it from the ground floor to become a $5 billion enterprise before it was sold to NBC.

Kay was very connected and, among her many roles, served on the board of Oracle Corporation. She was very interested in what was going on in Silicon Valley at the end of the nineties and wanted us to learn more about women’s involvement in the business scene there. We were co-hosting workshops in California with the Federal Reserve on access to capital and invited some women technology-entrepreneurs to join us.

The women said, “You know, the funding source you are talking about is bank lending, and that’s irrelevant to us. We’ll never get bank lending. We need equity capital.” The statistics were stark—less than 2 percent of venture capital was going to women-led businesses. So, we set out to educate ourselves about what we could do to increase women’s access to equity capital. And that’s where the whole idea of holding a venture forum featuring women-led businesses came into play.

Ghaffari: How did you start?

Millman: Once we decided we wanted to host a venture forum, we approached a few people who were knowledgeable about those programs—the investor community and the women’s entrepreneurial community—and together we formed a team that would produce the forum. We used the Oracle Conference Center as the venue and put the word out that we were looking for women-led technology businesses. We received more than three hundred and fifty applications for only twenty-five presentation spaces.

That first event was January 19, 2000, and five hundred people attended. Many of the investors attending weren’t supportive of a women-only event and told us, “We don’t invest in women. We invest in companies.” However, we thought it was important for someone to shine a spotlight on talented women entrepreneurs. Every company, but one, that we showcased that day received funding.

The success of that day convinced us that we should continue the program, and many people called to offer their help and suggest places to hold the forum. We decided to put groups together in other locations to host similar events.

Ghaffari: What explains why you’ve been able to do this successfully for now eleven years?

Millman: In the beginning, it was good timing and the financial support of the Kauffman Foundation. As the program evolved, the focus on facilitated coaching of the companies became critical to its success. And as I learned early on in my career, building relationships early is the “secret sauce.”

Ghaffari: Did you ask for a direct grant from Kauffman?

Millman: The Kauffman Foundations was the only entity that was interested in funding entrepreneurial programs. I had built a relationship with them when I was running the Council. They weren’t necessarily interested in women entrepreneurs, but, in 2000, they released a study called the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, about economic and entrepreneurial activity in many countries, focusing on what are the determining factors of success or impact. The results indicated that the number of women engaged in entrepreneurship in each country was a determining factor of the health of that country’s economy. You might say that Kauffman was our angel investor.

Ghaffari: How did the venture forums grow?

Millman: After Silicon Valley, we traveled to Washington, DC, and partnered with AOL to produce a forum and from there to Boston and Harvard. All these venues were places in which we had connections and a team of people who were committed to helping to produce a forum in their region.

The end of 2000 was another election year, and I found myself out of a job with the loss of Al Gore to George Bush. I guess I drew the short straw and became the one to run the organization. I pulled the nonprofit together—filed all the necessary documents. And that’s how Springboard Enterprises happened.

I didn’t leave the government right away—remember, it took them a while to decide that election. I had an assistant who left earlier, when the grant funds and nonprofit status came through. She managed the whole thing before I left the government. After I joined her, we established policies and procedures, pulled a staff together, convened a board, and started business.

Ghaffari: How did you build your first board?

Millman: For the founding board, we tapped people we knew, as well as those who were involved in producing the first three programs. The board was small and highly engaged. Also, we had a separate group of advisors who had been supporters during the first year of programming.

Ghaffari: How does Springboard differentiate itself from venture capitalists?

Millman: We don’t invest money. We are organized as a nonprofit, not a broker/dealer. Neither do we invest cash nor take equity in the companies, but we have invested considerable time, resources, and connections—which sometimes is as valuable as funding.

Ghaffari: What are some of the major differences among the communities you’ve served?

Millman: Clearly, there are some hubs of venture activity. Silicon Valley has a huge network that’s attuned to the types of business and transactions that are interesting to investors. The same is true in Boston. Then there are smaller markets like Austin and Raleigh-Durham. In some areas, say the Midwest, Chicago acts as a center of activity, but Minneapolis has an entrepreneurial market especially for medical devices as does the Madison area. Washington, DC, also has an active venture community. And New York is more active these days than in the past several years. There’s a concentration of life sciences companies in San Diego and entertainment companies in LA. You can find companies anywhere, but at some point the companies end up making the rounds in Silicon Valley.

Ghaffari: Is Springboard moving into the international market?

Millman: Gingerly. The only country we’ve reached out to is Israel because there is a critical mass of both investors and technology companies. Our first Israeli forum was in 2007, and we found some impressive women entrepreneurs there.

We have companies in Canada, China, India, a few African countries, and throughout Europe. Until recently, they sourced capital and customers in the USA, but lately we find they have been successful in raising funds in their own countries.

One of these companies from our portfolio is 51Job.com, founded by Kathleen Chien, a Chinese woman who spent many years in the States, where she saw that she could start a corporate recruiting firm in China based on the success of such ventures in the US. She used that business model to go back home and start a company to meet a new need in the Chinese market. Today she finds people to work for US companies that relocated to China.

Ghaffari: How do you decide to enter a market? What is your decision-making process?

Millman: Actually, I’m more of an intrapreneur than an entrepreneur. I take advice and suggestions from our staff, board, and advisors and create programs that address needs in the marketplace. That said, all the stars have to be aligned to make a program successful, and it takes a lot of involvement from a lot of people to ensure that success. We believe in collaboration with other organizations and institutions who are interested in creating opportunities for women entrepreneurs in their community, region, or country.

Ghaffari: How do you see Springboard growing over the next five years? What’s it going to look like?

Millman: I don’t have a crystal ball, but the way I anticipate growing is through our community of entrepreneurs who represent a unique expert network. We’ve spent a dozen years building a network of unbelievably talented women, who have, as my friend Sam Horn says, “been there, run that.” They know everything about their industries and launching and building businesses. There’s not anybody in our Springboard community who doesn’t have an expertise—from rocket science to marketing healthy food or building social media networks to simplifying commerce, and everything in between. So, the idea is to mine that network for the benefit of all women entrepreneurs.

We keep hearing the same questions, again and again—the same questions for the last thirty years. Why isn’t anybody paying attention to these talented women? How come women aren’t asked to be experts on conference panels? Why is it that every time I go to a conference, there are no women on stage? Where are the women? Are there any women who are qualified for XYZ? We set out to find the women and promote them as experts, and now we have a critical mass of experts in their fields and in new-venture creations who happen to be women. We are in the right place at the right time, with the right people.

Ghaffari: Why didn’t you start Springboard as a for-profit entity?

Millman: As I said, I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m an intrapreneur and thought an organization that produced educational programs like a university would be the best model. This model has worked miracles for the first ten years, and I’m anxious to see how we can innovate to make our programs and our network as successful for the next ten years.

Ghaffari: Do your boards and advisors provide you with any special advice about how to conduct business?

Millman: They are invaluable because they all have expertise that I don’t have. They fill in the blanks and are committed to helping us help our companies succeed. They are also bringing us their contacts. Our staff is also a major reason for our success. I make it a habit to hire people who are much smarter than I am and have important skills and talents to bring to the organization. I search for people and advisors who are problem solvers—creative, curious, problem solvers. I wish there were a DNA test for this because they are one in a hundred.

Ghaffari: Tell me about your family. How do they view your enterprise?

Millman: I feel pretty lucky. I have great kids—a daughter and a son who are out in the world doing what they love. My daughter works for a filmmaker. And my son is an artist, currently at the Chicago Art Institute. My husband runs his own construction–remodeling–design–build business. I guess all of us have the entrepreneurial gene.

Ghaffari: How would you describe your own decision-making style or method?

Millman: I always said that, in a void, I will make a decision, right or wrong, just to move the process along. I don’t read a lot. I’m not somebody who is an intellectual, but I absorb information from many sources. I learn a lot from other people, and my feeling is that sometimes you just have to stop talking and do something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You just have to make a decision and act on it. Everyone has a role to play, and we expect that each person will strive to exceed her own expectations.

Everybody here has to come in with a goal and an idea of what they want to learn and what they want to contribute to the organization. It’s not acceptable if you’re not adding any value, if you’re just here to get a paycheck.

Ghaffari: What kind of advice do you have for women today, especially young women?

Millman: I’m not sure I’m the best person to give advice to young women because what works for me may not work for others. It’s like when people ask me about what I think about balancing work and family. I don’t think about balance. It’s such a personal thing. I don’t believe that anybody can achieve balance all the time. I think you just do what you need to do to manage your life. Somehow, you make it work. You figure it out. Your life takes a certain path, and you deal with it as best you can. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. So, in that case, you just need to be flexible enough to try something else. I guess I would say that life is about being a problem solver and being able to find the right resources to help you.

What I look for in people is that sense of curiosity, that sense of needing to figure things out. But, I’ve learned that not everybody is like that. I used to feel really badly when people wouldn’t make connections for me. I knew they could, but it seemed as if they wouldn’t. Then I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point,² and realized that not everybody is a “connector”—the people who link us up with the world. That changed the way I thought about everything.

There are a few things I say whenever I speak to groups. First, “It’s not about you.” You learn that, when you have a child, you are no longer the most important person in the world. To be a successful mother, you have to recognize this and focus on what the child needs. The minute you understand that—then you can relax, get on the floor, play with your child, listen better, stop worrying about the cell phone or whatever you think you’re supposed to be doing. If you take that same approach in your business life, you’ll spend your time listening to what your customers need rather than pitching them products they may not need.

The second thing that I tell them is never do anything in life, ever, without a personal advisory board. Many women don’t have an external source of feedback. They end up with their back against the wall, with no support network, and no resources to help them re-orient. Always identify a group of people who can offer counsel and who will watch your back.

Ghaffari: Your organization is primarily oriented to women-owned business, but would you say your recommendations would be any different for men?

Millman: I think the experience in launching and building businesses is probably the same, but women have other interests and expectations that come into play. We understood what support women want and recognized that we could help them get access to the resources they need. At the same time, our goal was to build a great network of talented women entrepreneurs, and that’s our niche market.

Ghaffari: Do you think things have changed dramatically in the last ten years? Has your market moved on you?

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Millman: It’s a lot easier for companies to enter a market than it was ten years ago. The cost of building a web site for example is infinitely cheaper and, with more people on the internet and accessing info via mobile phone, it’s easier to enter a market faster. On the other hand, it’s not as easy to access capital to build your company quickly, but then you may not need as much capital. Today, there are a lot more women entrepreneurs—especially those women who have a special expertise based on their years of working for corporations or getting their PhDs or MBAs. There’s a huge pipeline full of women interested in running their own business or in forming teams with people they’ve worked with before.

I was talking with a woman this morning who had twelve years working at Hewlett-Packard, who ran a division there and knows how to build a technology platform and a winning team. She has a passion for fashion, so she decided to start a company that married her skills and her passion. That’s our target demographic—women in their thirties to fifties who have been in the corporate world, have run departments, or have expertise in a given area. There are a lot of women out there with the ability and interest to run billion-dollar companies.

Ghaffari: Do you see, among your clientele, that women follow the pink-collar kind of work, staying within the same businesses that women have been in for centuries? Or do you see them branching out of that?

Millman: I don’t see those stereotypes these days, but I’m sure there are many women who pursue those careers. I see the engineers, the scientists, the medical doctors, the finance and marketing gurus. Now, I won’t tell you that they don’t have an interest in fashion, health, well-being, and education. They do. Many of them have the skills to develop solutions to make housework, child care, and family-related products better, faster, cheaper, and more effective. For instance, Helen Greiner developed the Roomba to help her manage cleaning her carpets and floors while she worked to build robots for the Navy.

Ghaffari: Is there anything that you think you might do differently if you were starting out today?

Millman: No, but it would have been an easier life if I’d stayed in the corporate world. I’d be retired by now.

Ghaffari: What’s your personal plan for the next five to ten years?

Millman: No crystal ball. This is it for me.

Ghaffari: If women are succeeding in business, are they becoming a source of venture capital themselves?

Millman: Ahh, that’s the exciting part. People say that women are Johnny-come-latelies or Joanie-come-latelies to investing. We made it into the corporate C-suite, and then we wanted to be on corporate boards the minute they started putting more stringent regulations on board engagements. It’s almost as if the minute we get involved with something, the fun is over. But it’s been a journey from housewife to corporate executive to entrepreneur and now to investor.

This was a dream of ours ten years ago—that, once women were successful in starting and growing businesses, women would want to invest in what they knew. And sure enough, that is exactly what is happening right now. Several of our Springboard alumnae are now active investors and find that Springboard companies are a great source of lucrative investment opportunities.