Is your social mission a key selling point?

In an interesting new article in the Harvard Business Review written by Matthew Lee and Laura Huang, it suggests that women entrepreneurs are more likely to get funding and business if they emphasize their social mission. In their research studies looking into gender bias, social impact framing and the evaluation of entrepreneurial ventures, they observed that over the last decade, female founders who highlighted the social impact of their ventures led to more positive perceptions. In short, social impact framing seemed to reduce the discriminatory effects of gender bias. This offers some good news for women entrepreneurs as the research suggests that those businesses with social impact goals may actually benefit from talking about them freely in a pitch environment. However, it also seems to reiterate the challenge of gender bias continuing to play an outsized role in funding and business. The bottom line is that social impact can be used as a key selling point when talking to potential customers and investors, but only when that impact is authentic, sustainable and ultimately measurable.