This underfunded female demographic is launching the most start-ups in America, far from Silicon Valley

March 3, 2020

Gail Warrior, who created one of the largest woman- and minority-owned construction companies in the U.S., remembers her first experience applying for a business loan back in 2000.

She was chief executive of Dallas-based Warrior Group, a modular construction company that had just won a government contract to build a barracks at Fort Bliss, and needed to raise capital to complete the project. She went to her bank, where she already had been banking for two years and had several accounts — her business account, her personal account and a joint account with her husband. Despite having a history with the bank and a contract in hand, she was denied.