Bold Women, Big Ideas: Learning to Play the High Risk Entrepreneurial Game

Nobody gets it like Kay Koplovitz. Women in record numbers are breaking away from the constraints of corporate life to seek fulfillment in business on their own terms. Kay captures the spirit of that movement in her book. A must-read for every woman who aspires to create her own destiny.

As one of the many people Ms. Koplovitz mentions in this book, I found it to be as honest, up front, inspiring and instructive as she is in person. Its appeal is in its focused, quick moving style that engaged me from the first paragraph. In a comfortable, easy voice, Ms. Koplovitz openly shares her own experiences, good and bad, and also presents case histories of three other women entrepreneurs. I found it easy to identify with so many of the challenges discussed, and so helpful to read about her own story as well as those of the other women CEO's, and their quests for success in the venture capital and entrepreneurial arenas. Over the years, she has also had business dealings with some of the more "colorful" characters in the contemporary business scene. Her anecdotes about Barry Diller, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Sumner Redstone, Larry Ellison and many more, are fun to read as well as insightful.The message Ms. Koplovitz urges is clear. It's time for women to stop banging their heads against the ceiling, and move towards the open skies of entrepreneurship. This is an accessible, forthright book that avoids unnecessary complexity and addresses issues relevant to all women in the workplace. I recommend it highly.

Women can learn how to play the entrepreneurial game for bigger stakes: the author went from selling cable TV series to running her own major cable TV franchise, and in Bold Women, Big Ideas tells the aftermath of her venture. She learned some tough lessons on venture capitalists and where they choose to invest their money (with male business owners), creating her own venture capital forum in the process, designed to help women develop networks to get the money they need. Bold Women, Big Ideas is packed with important business insights.

I have been thinking for a while about what the next step would be in the much maligned feminist movement, unrepentant former bra-burner that I am. I think I've come upon it in Kay Koplovitz's new book, Bold Women, Big Ideas. Not everyone, myself included, will dream up patents for new biotech (or any other tech for that matter) processes. But sometime in an independent, creative woman's life, she may want to produce something besides the children she's birthed (no disparagement here, I have one myself), something that will cause the revenue stream to flow in, rather than continuously siphon it out. This book is the roadmap to that place, with everything you always wanted to know about making a solid business plan to finding the venture capitalists and convincing them to fund your new baby. Koplovitz serves as the best model herself, a bold woman who had the big idea of USA Network when the cable industry was in its infancy. She shares with her readers her own mistakes and insights learned from those mistakes ("if you're not an owner, it's not your business"). I was inspired, reading about the other fascinating women with big ideas and how they learned to allow their personalities to emerge when pitching their product to the men with the money. And it is the men who usually have the money, guarding it for the most part, from women's businesses, or, perhaps worse, assuming that where a woman's business may not necessarily be in the home, the home should be what her business is about (a la Martha). This is the book that the men who form the tight circle around the money don't want us to read.

I liked this book because it reveals the dirty little secret that men play power games in business at the expense of women. More important, it takes a good look at how women are doing amazing things to take business power for themselves. I liked what I saw. Koplovitz pulls no punches. She names names -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. And there are alot of names. Koplovitz decribes how, after twenty some years of high flying success, she was pushed out of USA Networks, a company she built from nothing to several billlion dollars. She was a CEO without equity despite her repeated offers to buy in. The boys said no. That was O.K. because they let her run the show. And she made them a fortune. But when Barry Diller, a member in good standing of the incestuous old boys network, ended up owning USA, he pushed her out so that he could play with his new toy. Koplovitz makes this tale a good read. But the book is alot more. Koplovitz is convincing that she is not bitter. She describes her catastrophe as a wakeup call. The glass ceiling turns out to be lead if you want to own a piece of the men's game. So she has set out to make it happen for herself and for other women who want to own big dollar companies based on the kinds of risks that earn big payoffs. She takes us along on her journey to find money for women with great business prosects. This is more than a serious "how to" book for anyone who wants to raise venture capital, although Koplovitz offers several chapters that read like a "to do" list if you want to win the hearts (and money) of venture capitalists. The book also inspires. It includes terrific stories of women who were sucessful participatnts in the Koplovitz brain child, Springboard 2000, a kind of boot camp to give hard driving women the unique presentation skills that rake in ventrue capital. Koplovitz initiated Springboard 2000 after she was appointed by the President as chair of the National Women's Business Council, a sub-cabinet department in Wasington D.C. She tells how hard it was to get ventrue captialist-- mostly men-- to participate in the Springboard forum where women presented their business plans. But the ventrue capitalists came and this is the tale of how the women conquered. Koplovitz's success to date suggests that hers is the best revenge-- that is, living well as the owner of her own business, Broadway Televison Network (BTN), and watching scores of other women push into the business and money game where it won't just be for men any more.