Padma Lakshmi is helping young women cook up a career in food.
The “Top Chef” host, author and mom wants to give female founders a chance to win funding for their food businesses, and help close the gender gap in venture capital funding.
“It’s really kind of criminal the amount of funding that goes to women versus men,” Lakshmi, 48, tells MarketWatch, noting that female business founders receive only 2% of all VC funding.
On average, women entrepreneurs receive $1 million less in funding than men for their ventures, and despite receiving less funding, companies with female founders produce more revenue — more than twice as much per dollar invested — than those founded by men, according to a 2018 study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
See also: Raising VC money made Gwyneth Paltrow feel ‘just like everyone else’
“The only way to even those numbers out for yourself and break away from the norm is to become close to people who are in a position to help guide you even if they don’t invest in your company down the line. The tutoring you get is really priceless,” Lakshmi says.
She partnered with Stacy’s Pita Chips PEP, +0.02% for its funding program Stacy’s Rise Project, which will provide a total of $200,000 in funding, plus networking and mentorship to five female founders in the food industry. Lakshmi will judge and select five finalists who will each get $20,000 in funding, business advice and a three month mentorship program. After that, a winner will receive an added $100,000 to help their business.
Lakshmi also shared with MarketWatch the best food trends to invest in now, and the money advice that helped catapult her career.
MarketWatch: What advice do you have for young people who want to become entrepreneurs but can’t afford to?
Padma Lakshmi: The best way is to surround yourself with people you want to be like — in any field, not just entrepreneurship. We all don’t have money to realize our dreams right away, but if we can get close to people who are maybe ahead of us, or doing what we want to do, we can offer our sweat equity just to learn.
What happens today, because of social media, we assume that what we see is always the truth. People present themselves as being experts or having already achieved something when it really takes so much longer to be an expert and build a business. People shouldn’t be demoralized by looking at what everyone else is doing. It takes time. We’ve lost the art of apprenticeship in society, and it’s a really important one.
MarketWatch: What’s the best financial advice you’ve ever received?
Lakshmi: Do not live beyond your means. You have to really be disciplined, and separate what society tells you from what will be the best path for you to follow. Our American culture is built on credit.
Think about, ‘Do you really want to put that extra purse on your credit card? Really, do you? It takes a lot of self-discipline to see through the hype. You have to understand that our media and pop culture is all based on selling us things, 90% of which we don’t need. It’s why soap operas exist, why the Super Bowl is on. I was a victim of it in my 20s and 30s. You really have to be stern with yourself and say, ‘I’m looking to my own future.’ I’d say, ‘No, I’m not going to buy that new purse. I’m going to pay for a course in cookbook photography.’
I’ve always been risk averse. My mother, who was a single mom and a nurse in the 70s and 80s, raised me alone and I saw her a lot of times stressed out — rightfully so. Everything is harder when you have a family and a mortgage.
MarketWatch: What food trends are worth investing in now?
Lakshmi: Anything in the health food space is great. Anything that’s gluten-free; anything that addresses the way Americans want to eat today versus traditional packaged foods. Organic is still big. Anything in the vegetable space. Plant-based protein drinks. People are really conscious of what they’re putting into their bodies.
MarketWatch: What was your last great investment?
Lakshmi: One thing I invested in was a tutor for my daughter last fall. She wasn’t doing badly in school, she was about average, but I knew that she was reluctant to want to read. She wasn’t enthusiastic to read. Our house is filled with books and her mother is a writer. This concerned me. I didn’t want her to have an aversion to reading, and I didn’t want to overreact. I said I have a busy schedule, my life is chaotic, and my schedule is unpredictable, I’d rather pay a professional who knows how to teach young people so that we get over this hump. If you give the child the gift of reading for pleasure, and loving to read, you give that child a world of education that you might not be able to visualize for any career or interest that she has in art or music or whatever. I hired a tutor twice a week and work with Krishna on reading skills.
Shares of Stacy’s Pita Chip parent company PepsiCo have been up 14% this year compared to a 10% increase for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.54% and a 14% increase for the S&P 500 SPX, -0.30%
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