Dumb Employers, Lucky Startups And An Untapped Reservoir

Editor?s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture?s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft?s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave.
A group of women is re-entering the workforce today and reshaping how products are made across key tech sectors like health & wellness, commerce and social products. Not only do they have the experience of raising families, but they?ve been business and technology leaders earlier in life. They?re becoming founders and leaders at startups and in the very companies they?ve been buying products and services from.
Not only do women make most of a family?s health decisions but 48% of graduating physicians are women and women compose 73% of medical and health services managers. As a healthtech startup, we think heavily about the importance of what I call the Family Chief Health & Wellness Officer (aka ?Mom?). Avado is not unlike many startups in that we have two male co-founders.  We?d be fools to not figure out ways to bring the female perspective into our business.
A bootstrapped startup such as Avado has many challenges, but it also possesses some key advantages. I want to share one key advantage related to this topic. I think it may be one of the biggest untapped reservoirs of talent. The beauty of startups is results matter much more than rigid hiring practices. Big, dumb companies often have rules that preclude a huge category of the potential workforce from being tapped. It?s a category that I?m familiar with as my wife was previously a marketer at Apple and Microsoft, yet it?s likely neither would hire her right now as her time commitment with our kids during the day doesn?t allow her to show up during a normal work hours. However, we get the benefit because she is able to help us with our marketing in the windows