Women-Owned Businesses: 5 Tips for Female Entrepreneurs (No. 4 May Surprise You!) Entrepreneurs

In 2017, only 17 percent of startups had a female founder and almost 98 percent of all venture capital went to firms founded by men. But Kate Gorman, formerly Zynga's youngest Director of Product and now CEO of Fort Mason Games, is one of Silicon Valley's rare exceptions. She's sharing bold, insightful tips for making it as a female entrepreneur in the Valley to help close its historic gender gap:

1. Think Like a Market Leader to Become One: Visualize yourself as the market leader and then work backwards, creating a set of achievable steps that will help you become a multi-billion dollar company. Don't sell yourself short; think in billions.

2. Trust the Fate of Your Company to an A-Team: Hire only the best people – and then give them the autonomy to jointly make decisions and own the outcome of their choices. This increases their motivation to do well and create better products.

3. Build Elite, Cross-Functional Teams: Teams don't have to be big to be effective. Creating small teams will drastically cut down meeting times and increase collaboration time between disciplines.

4. Play Games at Work (Yes, Really!): Knowing your market is key to creating a business that succeeds. In the gaming industry, that means playing games with your team – discussing how to make your product better while facilitating bonding.

5. Pop the Silicon Valley Bubble: It's imperative to create and study customer personas, especially in the bubble of Silicon Valley. Broadening your perspective with full immersion in the lives of your target customers will engender a more functional product.

6. Prioritize Action – But Measure Everything: You should always be moving as fast as possible to produce an MVP. However, you should also find the three metrics that matter most for business success and monitor them religiously. The data you collect will feed personalization algorithms.