This is part of Folksonomy's Featured Female Entrepreneur of the Week series of interviews.

Elisa Camahort is the President & co-founder of BlogHer, a successful community of female bloggers. Two other co-founders worth mentioning that has made BlogHer such a success are Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins.

What will it take to encourage more women to start companies?

Actually, women start and run companies at fairly high rates. What they’re not doing at high rates is seeking and securing multi-millions of dollars in venture funding. In Silicon Valley, that tends to make one a little invisible, but national statistics show that women-owned businesses are a significant chunk of American businesses.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle for women in today's world to start companies and how can we address that problem?

The biggest obstacle for most people outside the “norm” for a particular industry is the cliché that it’s “who you know” is actually true. How do deals get done? How do connections get made? Well, they tend to get done and made between people who are but one or two degrees of separation from one another. And for most of us, the connections who are one or two degrees of separation away tend to look a whole lot like us. I’m not sure diversity happens naturally. I think it happens when people recognize that it’s important. In a corporate and technology environment, that is ever-more customer-centered. I’m not sure how you could not recognize the importance of diversity in your development, marketing, and management team, but plenty of people don’t.

If cash flow was not an issue and you had had the choice to do any kind of startup, what would it be?

I think I can safely say that I’m working on exactly the startup I want to be working on because it has both a business model and a social mission. I have always believed that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, do you think women have fewer opportunities than men, and if so how can we change this for the better?

Well, it does go back to my answer above. Networking is critically important. Opportunities only come organically once you’ve laid the groundwork for those opportunities to arise. Obviously, as a co-founder of BlogHer, I think it’s important for women to show solidarity with one another, reach out to support one another, relish the opportunity to be role models for one another, and help all boats rise. I never had a female mentor until I started working with Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone on BlogHer. Now, we not only try to co-mentor one another, but we’re working with amazing women all the time. When you’re still outside the “norm”, when you’re still the “other”, there can be more power in the group than in the individual.

I also think that it’s been shown that women still bear the bulk of the household and child-rearing responsibility, even in two-parent homes. The world of hard-core Silicon Valley entrepreneurship expects you to be “always on”, available 24/7 and sometimes it seems like there are networking mixers every night of the week! That’s hard for most people, let alone people who are raising a family. The major societal shift hasn’t happened that will make it equally as likely for the man as the woman to stay home or even to be the go-to parent. Many of the top female execs I’ve met or heard speak have stay-at-home husbands. But they are in such the minority. Perhaps, if we get over this obsessive need to be “always on,” both parents could advance and excel and spend time with their children.

What or who is your greatest source of inspiration?

I am inspired by great writing, great art, and great self-expression. Humanity is plagued by so many flaws. Sometimes, it’s easy to despair for us. But then you hear that perfect piece of music, read an essay so articulate and passionate it brings tears to your eyes, or see someone blog their inner-most feelings and see their community rush to support them. That art displays the grand potential that we have, and you can find examples of that in the blogosphere.

What or who is your personal motivation for being an entrepreneur?

My personal motivation when I first struck out on my own after 15 years as an employee was that I wanted to be able to blame the big mistakes only on myself. After you’ve worked for a few companies and observed a few management teams at work you begin to feel the frustration of not really being in control of the big decisions. Of course, later I partnered up with Jory and Lisa to form BlogHer, so I’m not a “solopreneur” anymore. But we make all major decisions as a team so the buck does stop with us as a team. I like that responsibility. And I like knowing that if we see something that has to change, we can change it.