234 CLEARING THE HURDLES: WOMEN BUILDING HIGH-GROWTH BUSINESSES
ship—but that didn’t mean they were any more likely to
make a deal with a female founder. Neither woman would
ever have accepted anything less from a woman entrepre-
neur and, as they focused more intently on the issue, they
realized that they probably demanded even more. Partly
because there were so few successful female entrepreneurs to
serve as models and partly because they did not want to be
perceived as showing preferential treatment, the pioneers
agreed that early in their careers they held the few women
entrepreneurs they encountered to a higher standard.
The Diana Project research team conducted a survey of women
partners in mixed-gender venture firms to gain an understanding of