Detroit-Nagoya network empowers women-owned businesses around the world
A joint analysis by global startup accelerator MassChallenge and Boston Consulting Group revealed that businesses founded by women raise less than half the amount of funding compared to those founded by men — an average gap of more than $1 million.
Globally, less than 3% of venture capital goes to women-led startups. At the same time, data shows that women-led businesses produce higher returns on investment and create more jobs while doing so.
Finding ways to address that contradiction is the mission of femUniti (rhymes with 'community'), a Japan-based company supporting female entrepreneurs and business owners around the world. The company was established in Nagoya in January 2024 by Meagan Ward, founder of Detroit's first women's co-working space, and Setsu Suzuki, a pioneering diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultant.
Complementary communities
Ward, 34, a third-generation entrepreneur, launched her first business while still at Western Michigan University. Her family home was facing foreclosure during the 2008 recession, her single mother trying to make ends meet. Ward began doing freelance business marketing to help out, building up a client list by pounding the pavement. This allowed her to meet many women running businesses in Detroit, engendering a passion for supporting their entrepreneurship. It ultimately inspired her to found the co-working space Femology in 2017.
The success of that facility brought her to the attention of the State Department, which recruited her for the U.S. Speaker Program to engage with geopolitical allies on the topic of empowering women entrepreneurs.
Ward's Motor City pedigree made her a natural fit for a stint in Japan's automotive capital, so the program sent her to Nagoya in 2022. That's where she met Suzuki, the founder of Japan Institute of Supplier Diversity & Inclusion (SD&I).
Suzuki, 50, is a Nagoya native who studied business at Nanzan University and Yonsei University in Seoul. After briefly working in wholesale and founding a corporate training company, she was contracted to direct a supplier diversity program at WEConnect, a nonprofit that connects major corporations like Intel, Accenture and Johnson & Johnson with small- and medium-sized suppliers run by women.
The experience underscored for Suzuki how many challenges entrepreneurs from marginalized groups face due to lack of funding and other resources — so she decided to found SD&I to collect the data needed to lobby for change.
When Ward and Suzuki met at an event at the U.S. Consulate in Nagoya, they bonded over their shared passion for supporting women founders in the startup space, particularly in underrepresented fields like manufacturing and energy.
They immediately began talking about a potential collaboration and noted how their communities were complementary: Suzuki's network was full of suppliers, many of whom had inherited family businesses and had experience with the ins and outs of operations, while Ward's was full of scrappy new entrepreneurs, including ambitious first-generation business owners with scarcity-driven innovation.
'We kind of understood that ... women in Japan have what women in Detroit need: infrastructure, knowledge about succession (and) community,' says Ward. Meanwhile, her peers in Detroit came armed with the knowledge of 'how to start with zero resources (and) the resilience of a city coming back from bankruptcy.'
Setsu Suzuki (left) and Meagan Ward bonded over their shared passion and discovered they had complementary networks from their career trajectories in Nagoya and Detroit, respectively. |
Courtesy of Setsu Suzuki
Suzuki and Ward decided to launch an exchange program to support cross-cultural, peer-to-peer mentorship between the two cities. With the assistance of corporate partner Delta Airlines, they were able to complete an exploratory exchange in April 2024, bringing the groups to the TechTown and Bamboo Detroit innovation hubs as well as women-owned businesses around Detroit.
'This pilot provided us with countless sources of inspiration and revealed the potential that arises when women entrepreneurs visit each other's spaces and exchange ideas,' Suzuki says.
'Blueprint for the future'
FemUniti will launch its first official Global Entrepreneurial Exchange Program in 2026, with Amazon signed on to sponsor. Five women will be selected from both Japan and the United States to take part. Months of online discussions will help them curate an itinerary for their visits, ensuring their time is spent as productively as possible.
Ian Conyers, Amazon's head of community affairs, says the company sees the program as a way to foster both hyperlocal and global impact for women. '(FemUniti's) work to expose women to entrepreneurship and take their business to the next level represents true community values.'
FemUniti has already emboldened its members to dream bigger for their companies. Yuko Higashiyama founded Momono Trading, a company in Okayama promoting traditional Japanese crafts. 'FemUniti gave someone like me — from a rural city in Japan — a chance to step onto the global stage, proudly carrying our culture and craftsmanship,' she says.
Similarly, Kaoru Tsukamoto, president of Kirari Corp., a company that connects single mothers with employment opportunities, says the group gave her 'the confidence and community to take that next step (towards expanding internationally).'
To help members finance their goals, femUniti is also working to establish the femUniti Fund, a financial ecosystem that connects a network of socially conscious venture capitalists, angel investors, microfinanciers and others looking to prioritize ESG investments. (ESG refers to a method of evaluating potential investments based on environmental safeguards, social impact and responsible governance.) The fund is scheduled to launch in 2027.
Suzuki says they wanted to take their time in launching the fund to ensure it has a meaningful impact. 'We have come to understand that the realities faced by many women entrepreneurs in Japan are still largely underrecognized. This has highlighted the importance of first building a strong community and uncovering those realities through trust-based engagement.'
Ward and Suzuki are quick to point out that investing in women-owned businesses isn't just the right thing to do to address inequity; it's actually more than likely to be profitable. The aforementioned BCG analysis found that women-run startups generated 78 cents of revenue for every dollar of funding, while startups run by men only made 31 cents.
Ward and Suzuki say this increased profitability is because women tend to do business differently. One way is in risk assessment, where women tend to be more conservative, says Ward. They tend to run leaner businesses with higher profit margins.
Nonetheless, investors still tend to favor businesses run by men. Ward thinks this is mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Startups are more often run by men, so many investors expect to see a man at the helm and feel more comfortable with that scenario no matter what the financial projections may say.
Another typical difference of women-run businesses is their relation to labor and the wider community. According to research conducted by SD&I and other analysts, businesses owned by women tend to hire more employees from disenfranchised groups, and offer better compensation and more flexible working conditions.
They also tend to be social entrepreneurs, focused not on the traditional startup goals of immediate profits and exponential growth but on addressing a need or issue in their community while laying the groundwork for long-term growth — a holistic approach taken by what are now called 'zebra companies.'
'Not only is it the right thing to do but it's the more profitable thing to do,' says Ward. 'And so what we're gonna start to see (is) ... more funding pathways to entrepreneur startups and those zebra companies because innovation is the answer.'
Although the recent backlash against DEI in the United States has presented some challenges for femUniti, Ward and Suzuki are still optimistic and grateful for the support of their members and partners.
'As DEI gets rolled back or politicized, the needs don't disappear — and that's exactly where femUniti steps in,' says Ward. 'At a time when DEI is being challenged, we're proving that inclusion isn't a trend — it's the blueprint for the future.'
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