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It was a scene straight out of the 1990s: A web start-up, flush with nearly $1 million in new investor cash, threw a party at a downtown bar to toast that success.

But here’s the 2011 twist to the story of DailyWorth, a daily email newsletter of financial tips: the founder, Amanda Steinberg, isn’t a 24-year-old male Stanford dropout. She’s a thirtysomething mom of two who is determined to change the image of what a serious entrepreneur looks like.

"I started this thing with the vision of having millions of subscribers from day one," she says. She spent 10 years in the tech world and saw many "half-baked business models." She knew she could "do a much better job."

That might be true — but Steinberg is one of the rare women who has convinced the so-called angels and venture capital investors who fund start-ups of that fact.

Women own 29 percent of all businesses, according to a recent American Express study. Yet various expert calculations find they receive well under 10 percent of all equity financing. Many female entrepreneurs either use their own funds or take out bank loans to grow. These methods have their merits, but also their limits. According to AmEx, women-owned businesses employ just 6 percent of the country’s workforce and contribute less than 4 percent of overall business revenue.

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