Kimberly Kovacs isn’t interested in talking about the challenges of balancing her personal life against the demands of running a growing software company.
The founder and chief executive of Mission Viejo-based OptionEase Inc. would rather talk about the difficulties women business owners face in attracting private investment … or what she calls higher education’s shortcomings in fostering female entrepreneurs … or the highs and lows of early-stage technology companies.
Kovacs says she turns down plenty of invitations to give talks on work-life balance. She occasionally accepts one—and then tells businesswomen in the crowd to avoid family talk.
Sure, women have a hard time striking a balance between their business and personal lives, she says, but that’s not unique.
“To me it’s no different than anyone in the office here,” Kovacs said.
Kovacs is among a small-but-growing roster of female chief executives in Orange County’s technology sector, which generally reflects the male-dominated nature of the larger industry.
They are shedding stereotypes along the way.
Kovacs established OptionEase in 2006 to help finance executives, attorneys, entrepreneurs and investors create and track financial information in response to requirements mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The law, passed in 2002, created stricter financial reporting standards in the wake of back-dated option investigations and corporate accounting scandals that rocked the likes of Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. and brought down Houston-based energy company Enron Corp. and Chicago-based accounting firm Arthur Anderson LLP.
“From Day One, I started fundraising,” said Kovacs, who also has taught entrepreneur courses at University of California’s campuses in Irvine and Santa Barbara. “There was no way I was going to mortgage my house.”
OptionEase in 2009 raised $3.5 million in its first financing round led by Corona del Mar-based Miramar Ventures.
It helped that Kovacs was the former chief financial officer at ORYXE Energy International Inc., an Irvine-based fuel additive developer and distributor that had raised $40 million from investors during her tenure.
OptionEase now counts more than 800 customers that use its software products to organize revenue, tax information, capitalization tables, investor stakes and other compliance data.
It employs about 45 people. Kovacs refused to disclose revenue but said the company is profitable.
Tested
Lisa Varga was tested a little more than her colleagues moving up the ranks, particularly as a younger woman in the facility maintenance and energy management sector.
“I enjoy working with male counterparts and earned their respect over the years,” said the cofounder and chief executive of Phoenix Energy Technologies in Irvine.
The initial challenges—having to prove herself time and again—didn’t stymie her determination or career development. They did push her to launch a trade association that focuses on mentorship, education and work-life balance for women in the industry.
Varga launched Phoenix Energy as a consulting firm eight years ago in New Jersey, but quickly decided to move into technology. She relocated the company to Irvine and changed the business model to develop software that helps companies manage energy usage.
Phoenix Energy in April secured a $5 million second round investment led by Five Peaks Capital Management and Bluff Point Associates, both based in Connecticut. The proceeds are targeted for expansion and hiring.
The company has raised $7.5 million in the last three years and counts Office Depot, Home Depot, Cinemark Theatres, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy among its clients. It has about 55 employees here and in New Jersey.
Azita Yazdani commutes weekly between Orange County and Silicon Valley to strengthen business ties and increase her chances of landing a sizeable investment to bring her company’s technology to market.
“Women basically have no access to capital,” said the chief executive of Exergy Technologies Corp. in Irvine. “I’m talking venture and institutional, investment money.”
Male-owned companies raise about 80% more capital in their first year than female-owned counterparts, according a A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Firms, a new book funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The book, released in late May, also found that women rely more heavily on personal financing than men.
Yazdani started fundraising about three months ago and hopes to secure $10 million.
The company raised $500,000 in a seed round but has largely been funded by Yazdani.
“As a woman engineer you have to develop credibility and tech validity with men in order to be taken seriously,” Yazdani said. “I know how to talk with customers and sell the technology.”
Exergy developed a purification-and-recycling system to reduce water consumption and chemical waste in manufacturing processes. The systems range from $50,000 to the high six figures. Most of the company’s customers are in Asia and Europe, with a much smaller contingent in the U.S. and Southern California.
Statistics on women-run technology companies are scarce, although anecdotal evidence points to a gradual shift in the executive ranks.
At Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro Inc., Orange County’s largest company in terms of revenue with $36.3 billion last year, Renee Bergeron serves as vice president of Managed Services and Cloud Computing for Ingram Micro North America. Bergeron was honored as a 2011 Woman of the Channel by industry trade publication CRN for her work at the world’s largest technology distributor.
Lauri Klaus has seen a big shift on the sales side in her nearly three decades in the technology industry.
Klaus is the former vice president of worldwide sales and services at Epicor Software Corp., where she led some 1,500 employees and a $200-million business line. That was before the Irvine-based company was acquired a year ago for $976 million by private equity firm Apax Partners in London, which combined Epicor with Northern California-based Activant Solutions Inc. in a pair of deals valued at $2 billion.
Late last year she established KeyedIn Solutions with her husband and former Epicor Chairman George Klaus. The couple cashed out from the Epicor deal and took a 70% stake in Minneapolis-based Datacom International for $2 million. They put the company under the KeyedIn banner and kept the headquarters in Minneapolis, Lauri Klaus’ hometown.
The Klauses hope to grow the company into a global cloud-services player. Most of its executives are women.
“I’ve seen real change in the sales role in our company, where women are really stepping up and taking on additional risk,” said Klaus, who serves as chief executive. “Without taking on any risk, you will not achieve great rewards.”
