When Samantha Letscher and Isabel Benatar, the founders of Bossy Chicago, met and became friends a little more than a year ago, in an entrepreneurship course during their sophomore year at Northwestern, they decided that one day they wanted to start a business or organization that would combine their interests in feminism and social change. Over this past winter, they began working in the Garage, Northwestern’s student start-up space, and thinking more seriously about what kind of project they wanted to do.
Bossy launched earlier this year. Originally the website was conceived as a collection of interviews with female business owners in Chicago. Letscher and Benatar planned to use social media to direct visitors to the businesses they profiled. But soon after the project launched, it took a turn.
For instance, she says, women have a 51 percent share or greater in only 36 percent of all businesses, and since those businesses tend to be smaller, they only employ 15 percent of the workforce and make 12 percent of the total revenue. For every dollar a woman gets in funding or loans, a man gets $23.
The women they’ve been talking to get it. At a mentor speed-dating event, they met with more than 40 potential mentors. “Women’s faces lit up [when they talked to us],” says Benatar. “Did you notice that? It was a spark of, ‘This is so cool.’”
