Navigating Capital As A Woman: Dr. D Sangeeta Of Gotara On Top Strategies for Women Founders, CEOs and Leaders Seeking Institutional Investments
An Interview with Vanessa Ogle
Create a term sheet of why you want the money, how much and how will you spend it to fill the gaps?
Despite making remarkable strides in the business world, women continue to face unique challenges when seeking institutional investment. In this series we would like to discuss the process of securing capital from institutional investors, and provide actionable strategies to help women founders, CEOs, and leaders navigate this critical aspect of business growth successfully. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. D Sangeetayour
D Sangeeta goes by her last name. Four year ago she left the corporate world after more than 25 years to launch a tech-startup, “Gotara” an AI enabled platform that is a Business Accelerator for technical organization. Prior to that she was Vice President of Connections at Amazon reporting to the CHRO, where her team was responsible for an innovative platform creating employee engagement. Prior to Amazon she was in several executive roles at Nielsen and Amazon. She is a Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from the University of Illinois, and M.S. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. She has authored two books and has 27 patents to her name.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I truly wanted to be a successful scientist but at GE while working on Jet Engine Technologies I was tapped for a marketing role. I got the taste of jumping into brand new area, learning and exceeding expectations each time. After that I had roles in operations, risk management, M&A, and quality, helping me round out to become a general manager. I did several technical and business roles at Nielsen and Amazon at executive levels. I always thought there were two gaps in all my teams as a technical/business leader — gender gap and manager capability gap. I always enjoyed coaching my mentees to help them grow into bigger leaders making bigger business impact.
I wanted to scale that secret sauce from a few people to millions of women and managers. Hence, Gotara was born!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I attended a customer meeting where I was representing technical expertise. In the meeting customer asked us for a favor — the request was unethical where change in numbers would personally benefit him but it would be a lie for the customer. I clearly indicated in the meeting that there request was out of order. Despite that I got requested again internally by my own peers. I was very uncomfortable as it could make us losse in millions. Finally I reach out to my leader and clearly shared the situation.
To my surprise, the leader took the case to the CEO, and the communication then started at the highest levels. Soon after the incident the leader at the customer making the request was let go. Eventhough this situation was very hard, I am glad I took the stand and was happy to see the senior leadership aligned to doing the right thing despite the possibility of loss of revenue.
It is critical for us to know when to stand your ground and when it is not worth it as you might win your arguments down the line in a few months anyway.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
This story didn’t feel funny at the time when it happened. It was stressful. But looking back, it was an easy thing to have accomplished without stress.
Very early in my career, my organizations was heavily audited by Corporate Audit Staff. I loved working with them to identify gaps that I could take to the senior leadership to ask for resources as well. One time they asked us to make a technical change in the model that predicted costs over decades. In our SME view point, it was a wrong assumption to make that change. I stood the ground and so did CAS. I assumed my CEO and CFO will come to my rescue and it didn’t happen. No one challenged CAS. My view point was — we are all human and we make mistakes. Just accept it and we can move on.
Guess what happened — we had to change the model according to their recommendation. However, 2–3 months later when we collected data, we were right and the model was reversed. Looking back, I would have said — “take a chill pill — let them change the model, once you have the data, you can easily change it back! You do not need to stress!” I wish I had Gotara to tell me that but I had many sleepless nights thinking I would leave this job or I might even get fired. There was no need for that!!!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I have had several people, I would call my mentors! One of them has been to this date — Dan Heintzelman, now retired as a Vice Chair of GE.
Back in 1998, he and other leaders reviewed our R&D program for GE Aviation. I was a Materials Scientist at Corporate R&D at GE. At the end of the review session, he asked me if I would be interested in taking a role in marketing at GE Aviation? I was blown away and also scared as I had no experience doing marketing. Looking back I would do it again! I didn’t realize at the time, he became my sponsor at GE. At that stage of my career I had no idea what sponsors or mentors or networking meant. I felt lucky!
In a typical GE fashion, he and the company helped me grow into a general manager by offering opportunities in areas that I had no experience in. It trily developed my confidence — throw anything at me, I will be able to solve it and do it better than before. I love to learn about new areas and learn from previous leaders from their successes and failures.
That experience truly spiraled me up in my career from GE to Nielsen to Amazon and now Gotara!
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Bold by Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler.
When I took a critical leadership role for a technical organization that is responsible for innovation, this book really came in handy! This organization was so broke every which way, that it had forgotten what it takes to innovate. So, in my first leadership session, the book became a workshop for us.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I spent over 25 yrs in corporate America — reached C-suites and had a very successful career. I wanted to take on something that I am truly passionate about. Two things that have been close to my heart were talent development in general and gender gap in Technical fields. I wanted to close the gender gap and leverage the full potential of each technical talent in the organization, hence, Gotara was born!
What do you think needs to change in the investment landscape to support more women entrepreneurs?
Investors need to evaluate the startups on their merits. I have felt that same startup led by a guy can get funded faster than one led by women. Instead, the startup investment should be based on three Ts:
- Team — You got a rock star team (including you) who is committed, passionate, and experienced!
- Traction — Have you shown traction with customers where they have paid for your services and your success is measured by clear KPIs.
- TAM — Is your total addressable market large enough? If it is, that makes the 3rd crieria for you to get funded.
Can you share a defining moment in your journey to secure institutional investment? What was a key lesson you learned from that experience that other women can apply in their funding efforts?
Based on my answer above — After I clearly showed success in the 3 Ts and got a few “Nos”. I then decided to bootstrap my business as we were growing and beginning to make profit. There maybe a time in the future where I may want to grow at a faster rate that may require funding from institutional investors.
I would recommend that other women entrpreneurs if they need institutional funding they go the route of accelerators to build network and connections.
In your experience, what key factors do institutional investors look for in women-led startups that may differ from their general investment criteria?
These were the two areas I felt women founders always got grilled or were sent subliminal messages:
They always ask for the next level of traction — if you have traction, have you seen the next level of growth?
If you have not been a founder before, how can they trust you to do this.
How do you build and leverage networks to gain access to institutional investors interested in supporting women-led businesses?
This is my advice to all women founders — build your network on investors first. Get to know them. Let them get to know you. And raise funding only when you are ready with your:
- Story
- Why you are doing this — which problem does it solve?
- How is your solution unique?
- What are the benefits?
- Do you a solid team that you can go through this journey?
- Is your TAM large enough? Create a more believable story on opportuity.
Can you please share your “Top 5 Strategies for Women Founders, CEOs and Leaders Seeking Institutional Investments”? If you can, please share an example or story for each.
1 . Learn the top 3 Ts of getting investment (see above) Plus
2 . Network with investors to identify which investors will fit your need the best — you are also interviewing them
3 . Create a term sheet of why you want the money, how much and how will you spend it to fill the gaps?
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Business folks need to consider talent as their key to all success. Invest in them before a nice building, a nice office, nice perks, bonus, focus on customers etc.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to meet Malinda French Gates. Her goals and mine are totally aligned on closing the gender gap in STEM fields. I have made several attempts but I have not had the opportunity to meet her. Joining hands with her will propel this effort into a global turning point of raising the tide for 25 million STEM women across the globe!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Follow Gotara: https://www.gotara.com/
And our social media pages at:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/71445976/admin/
https://www.instagram.com/gotara_stem/?hl=en
https://twitter.com/gotara_stem
https://www.facebook.com/Gotarawoman
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsangeeta/
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.
Navigating Capital As A Woman: Dr D Sangeeta Of Gotara On Top Strategies for Women Founders, CEOs a was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.