The future is female – Tech founders redefining the rules
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:17
talk is about empowering women. I checked our today's speakers,
00:24
and I have to say we're really good, because we're 50-50, so very equal, I have to say. And our first talk is called The Future is Female, Tech Founders Redefining the Rules. I don't know if you know, but nine per cent, only nine
00:43
per cent of tech start-ups are founded by women, but recent data just approved that women or female-led companies achieve 35 per cent more of return on investment than their male counterparts, so just saying. I would like to introduce to you
01:03
Alice Steinbrück. She will be the moderator for the next panel. She's director of strategy and programmes at the Vodafone Institute. Alice, welcome to the stage. It's yours. Yes, I would also like to welcome on stage our
01:27
panellists. I will welcome Brenda, Miriam and Larissa, and I will introduce them shortly after we started our conversation. Please welcome. Yes, it was already mentioned,
01:46
I'm from the Vodafone Institute. What is the Vodafone Institute? It is a European think and do tank of Vodafone, and we explore the potentials of future technologies and its impact on society. When we tackle this problem and we
02:01
actually focus on this question, it was quite striking that we need to focus on women's participation in technology, because, in our view, it is essential that women shape the future as well and start to get involved in technology, and we need them in the workforce of steam, so we had the idea of making up an accelerator programme
02:21
focusing on female empowerment and technology. We actually received 150 applications from 52 countries, which was quite nice, because we realised it is a topic worldwide, and there is a demand of women from all parts of the world. But before I start to talk about the programme and why we did it
02:43
and what we did in Berlin, I would like to show you a short video that we have done after our first class. Efline, for me, is like a challenge, if I should say. I feel challenged to achieve certain goals and get to a
03:03
certain level with all the insights that I have received. It was for female founders and it was for female empowerment, and it was also promising you to get to the next level. Efline is one of the very few in the world that combines these two or three aspects together.
03:22
So when I saw Efline, I thought that was for me. So Efline for us was really a great learning experience. So as you see, everybody is from different countries, continents, and with different culture, mindset, and this is
03:44
really important. I think the diversity and variety is what we have cherished here. And you feel much more stronger together as a community. We learn a lot from each other. That makes us move forward as a collaboration. An opportunity, it's a golden opportunity.
04:21
Being here in the city makes a big difference. And the history and the culture and the creativity here. Sometimes I need a skill within my startup and I just go up there in the Impact Help wall and I just look for someone who has the same skill and I reach out to them personally. So it was a lot of culture.
04:40
We have a great mentor. Connections to founders, foundations, to investors. Go for Efline, it's a really inspiring experience. I think it's one of the best accelerators out there.
05:12
We have fortunately one of the participants of Efline here, Brenda, she came from Uganda to be here today. And I would like to ask her, first of all,
05:22
what does she do? She's the CEO of Vasivision. Vasivision is a company that uses mobile technology to improve eye care and provides affordable eyeglasses made from recycled materials for school children. So Brenda, what was your motivation to do this and to actually found yourself and use technology
05:41
for your solution, especially because I know that you worked at Deloitte and you had a secure income and probably a very good career ahead of you. So what was the reason why you actually chose to become an entrepreneur? Well, mostly for me, I was looking for the fulfillment in actually making a difference.
06:02
I felt the gap in especially healthcare and particularly eye care in my country. And when I thought about what I could do, that actually led me to start the company. But leaving the job for me, I knew that if I hadn't left the job, I wouldn't have given my company
06:23
100% and I needed to give my company 100% if I wanted to get to where I wanted to go. Did you have challenges as a woman to do so? Did your family or your environment agreed and supported you in your way?
06:41
Yeah, lots of challenges. Actually, if you're a female founder back in Uganda, especially in the technology space, because most of the people, especially coders and developers and engineers, most of them are male. So when you come out and you have a solution and you're a woman, very few people take you seriously
07:01
because they think that you should be probably doing a business in cosmetics or selling juice, which is good. I'm not saying it's not a good business, but when you step outside of the conventional female kind of business, then they think you're crazy
07:21
and that you probably won't make it. Yeah, and that's something else that inspires me as well every day to make sure that I make it. Efline is an accelerator program that focuses on women and technology. And we heard before we started our project from many women, actually, that they said they don't like to have projects
07:42
that are specifically made for women because they have this feeling that it's positive discrimination. You chose to do Efline. Why did you choose to do something like that? And why don't you think that something like Efline is discriminating yourself? I think Efline, and actually, now that I've already done Efline, I know that my targets for it before were achieved.
08:04
And I applied for Efline because I saw two things. The first thing is I saw it as an opportunity to learn. My company is really young. We've just made a year. And I wanted to learn, to get the skills,
08:21
to get the teaching and the learning that would give me mileage that I otherwise would have maybe achieved in a year, then I could achieve in a shorter period. And immediately after Efline and everything we've learned, now we're actually soon opening our new store. And it's barely been a month since I left.
08:41
Secondly, women, we have, especially I'll speak a lot about in Africa, we have a little bit of an imposter syndrome. Somehow we don't feel like we're good enough. Even when you have the skills and you have the knowledge, you still don't feel good enough. You always think that you'll play second.
09:01
So applying for this program and being part of all these other women that were actually doing amazing things. One of the people had been mentioned by Forbes under 30 Under 30, one of the participants in the cohort. And to see people like that, for me it gave me a lot of emotional strength
09:21
and motivation to actually keep doing what I'm doing. And that was the second thing, the reason that I applied for it. Congratulations on your opening. And I heard in one month. I will turn now to Miriam. Miriam is the founder and managing director of RatePay. And you have been a very successful entrepreneur
09:41
for several years now. And what's even more striking is that you are very active in being a mentor for women as well. And you're really active in different initiatives like Women in Digital. And before I ask the question why you think that mentoring is so important, I would like to also ask you what was your motivation back then to actually found your company and do it yourself?
10:04
So my motivation was not so much about the women's thing. So I never saw any women being role models that I could adapt. So it just was not there. Now I was working in a very niche environment in payments. So before FinTech was founded, actually I was working there since many years.
10:20
And I started working in a startup in the early 2000s. So I grew up with an industry that was totally new. And I was, to be honest, I always worked together with men but I never felt like that I don't belong to them. I always felt really accepted and didn't have this feeling that they don't like me. But we grew up together with a certain topic.
10:41
So actually, for me, it was more or less that I really saw this gap that I really, really wanted to do. I really saw something that I had so much, let's say, energy in this certain field that I really wanted to change something there. And I really saw something that I said, I want to do exactly this. This is what I want to do as a job.
11:01
And I think, yeah, when you get this, when you find something that you really burn for, I think it's easier then to go through all these difficult things, yeah. My second question would be, because you are such an active mentor and you also agreed after five minutes to come here on stage and to talk with us about women empowerment.
11:20
And why do you think role models and mentoring is so important for female entrepreneurs? Well, the thing is, in leadership, you see many leaders, they're just men. Most of the time you see men and when you don't see people that you might, that you never think maybe as a woman that you can achieve that as well.
11:41
I think this is one thing of finding a business that you have a vision that you can achieve it as well. And when you see more of these women that are maybe not, I mean, they're not all super smart and they, I mean, I cannot program. I'm working in tech, but I'm not a programmer. And I never thought that I need to know everything. Always, I just loved the idea.
12:00
I love new technologies. And I think when you see people that are maybe similar to you or you have a good idea but you're not able to do everything by yourself, you might find reasons that you want to do it as well. This is something I said to Julia, my colleague, we were walking around Republica. I mean, I'm a little bit older now already,
12:20
but when I was in my 20s, there was not something like this. And there was not even, you never talked about women empowerment or women role models. So my role models at that time were not the women. It was more or less the people that I worked with or my ex-boss, he was my role model, to be honest, because I always thought, this guy, he founded several companies and he was a really great guy,
12:41
but he was not smarter than me, to be honest. That was always my thinking. And then I really said, if he can do it, why am I not able to do that? And I think the more people that you see, that they stand for something that you want to be, and I think then it's easier to maybe find ideas,
13:01
to maybe find companies, whatever, or do what you love, yeah. When you are here in Berlin in several tech networks during evening hours, and you are a woman, are you still faced with stereotypes? Are there still challenges that you would like to overcome, or you thought maybe in 2017 we would have already done this in the past?
13:24
Yeah, sure, there are stereotypes everywhere. Yeah, I mean, you feel them, but it's sometimes also I have to admit that sometimes the women, it's their own fault sometimes. When they are too, they put themselves too much into stereotypes. I think they have to speak out louder what they want to be and what they want to have. And I mean, the stereotypes,
13:41
it's not only in the industry, it's also in our school, so we have to change our, let's say, attitudes towards several things sometimes. So also how we want to be as a woman. How do we, I don't know how it's our, the way how we want to act. Also, this morning I spoke to this little team
14:01
that they are building programming apps for third grades. And they want to really get rid of the stereotypes, and I thought it's a great idea, because when you really get girls into this, that there is not a big difference between the boys and girls, and you really have to get rid of these stereotypes at an earlier age in education.
14:20
This is something I would really pledge for. At the end, it's all about money. And we have here Larissa, she's a business angel, so she also has an investor perspective, but also works as a business advisor, so she also knows what's going on in companies as well. The question to you, the investor perspective,
14:43
what do you think? Do female founders or investors have to change? Because we talk with lots of women out there who said they have the final pitch and they have a very good business case, but at the end, the guy gets the money. So what do you think is the problem? I think there's a need to evolve from the investor side as well.
15:01
The female founders just pitch differently. Now, think about it this way. The VC model, in a sense, is broken. Over 90% of all the VC models nowadays or VCs that invest into companies are looking for the proverbial unicorn. Now, most female founders, they're not in it for the exit,
15:21
they're in it to solve a problem, so it's a completely different mindset. Now, there are investors out there who are looking for exactly these types of investment opportunities. I think it's a matchmaking problem. I don't think the money is missing. It's really just a matchmaking problem between the two different types of setups
15:40
that you're looking for. What about the VC boards? Most of the VC boards have male investors sitting in these boards, and women are still missing. Do you think everything will be changed when there are more women sitting in the boards, or is this a utopia? I don't think it makes a difference.
16:02
It's going a tiny bit of a difference, maybe, but the mindset in itself has to change. Men as well as women have to change the mindset. Family offices are far more long-term thinking, so they're probably the right type of investors. However, they're very risk-averse, so the whole industry in itself really has to change.
16:21
Does it overall make a difference? I don't think it can hurt, that's for sure. Will it be enough? Probably not. There are a couple of, like the Female Founders Fund. There's Rising Tide, which is 99 women co-investing into projects in the US and in Europe.
16:41
There are things happening on that front, so I believe we're going in the right direction. We just have to handhold the investment community to make it go faster. And do you think that women, because we also talked with lots of women, they said we just present differently. We actually want to present differently
17:00
because we want to focus on different things and make sure that, as you said, changing and impact is one of the most essential parts of our business model. Do you think that women have to adapt to the investors, meaning they have to present themselves differently, they have to prepare for the pitches differently? Do you think that they have to sell them the ideas differently than men do?
17:24
I believe that the VC and private equity model, as I said beforehand, is a broken system because the success rates are just not there. Over 90% of the investments that they do fail. So do you really want to play a game
17:40
where you know that the game's already rigged? The question really is, yes. If you want to play in that game, you have to change. You have to adapt to what the VCs want. Means you have to think big, which a lot of women do, but you have to over-promise, basically. That's what you have to do. You have to over-promise, and it's just not in most of the female trace.
18:03
Some female trace, men can also have some female trace, but if you over-promise, you're probably, and you have this huge hockey stick, it's a high-risk business, then you'll probably get some money. Now, if you don't want to do that, if you want to stay true to yourself, then think about it that way. It's a partner.
18:20
You're going to have these investors for five to 10 years in your company. Do you really want to have people in the company that's in that way, that really want to have that high-risk, high-scalable kind of business? Or are you looking for partners maybe more in the business angel area which are looking for growth and potential exits afterwards, but with less risk, potentially having dividends
18:42
in between? As I said, the whole system is changing. The business angel system is changing with co-investment schemes now. I'm seeing a lot more VCs who are not only at the hockey stick, but who are looking for steady growth. So I think if you are on the lookout for money,
19:02
just give it a tiny bit more time. Things are changing towards more sustainable businesses. Good. Before we open up questions for the audience, because I saw that there are many women in this room, so I would love to maybe also give them the opportunity to ask questions to our panelists.
19:20
I would ask each one of you to just say one word how you would describe women in tech actually at this actual date. What is your opinion about women in tech? Brenda, just one word. Potential. Larissa. It's going to be three. Up and coming. The future. The future. Very good.
19:41
So are there any questions from the audience? Because as I said, I saw many women out there, but also men, of course, are allowed to ask questions today. Okay, thank you. My name is Devi.
20:01
I am from Nepal. I have a question to Brenda if I catch her name properly. I think it's not easy to start business for women actually in developing country specifically. And then I'm just wondering to know, is there any policy incentives from government side?
20:21
Number one. And then number two is, what is the social and emotional support you get to start up and continue your business? Thank you. Okay, thank you. I'll talk about Uganda. We don't really have a policy for business women per se, but our education system,
20:42
when girls get to university level, they get an extra 1.5 point that gets them an advantage over the boys to encourage them to get a degree. So that's as far as I would say policy supports women. But when it comes to business,
21:01
it's a leveled field. Women, men, it's the same. And secondly, emotional support. It's actually really important, social, emotional. And what I usually do, I normally stay within the company of other women that I see are actually either are ahead of me or are really working hard to get there.
21:23
When you're in that kind of company, you realize that you actually face the same challenges in a way and everything cuts across and you support each other. So I think that wherever we are, if every woman supports the other, then I know that one day we will get to a point
21:42
where it's no longer a question of, is it female or is it male founded? So yeah, that's what I think. Hello, my name is Maran Marchenko of the head of the digital media women. We are also thinking about how we can raise
22:01
the number of women in tech. And I was on a panel discussion on Hanover Messe the week before last week with a government official. And I asked the question, why aren't there any diversity criteria on the government side? Then they found startups.
22:22
Why do they support a system where nine out of 10 startups fail? The answer was, that's what's wanted. You don't want more success. Failing is part of the system. And it's not possible to involve
22:41
any criteria of diversity. How should it be done? I wish I could have given the answer, but maybe you have an answer for me for the next panel. I actually know that the German accelerator being funded from the Ministry of Economy
23:00
and they just had an event and they were only male startups presenting themselves for example. I think if you have public money spending to private startups, I think you should make sure that you also fund female startups and even make it a quote at the beginning. If you say, okay, maybe we, I don't know,
23:21
we want to have 10 startups and out of 10 we have to make sure that at least three of them have female founders. And I think it will be a journey, but I think also ministries have to start to think how we can proceed with this and have to change maybe their selection procedures. I'm not saying that I'm from a quota,
23:40
but I think that maybe we have to think about or rethink our selection process and these things. That's just one point that I just... Vote us already? No, I don't, I mean we do, F. Lane does, but I don't know any other initiative at the moment.
24:01
Maybe I can add just a tad. So I'm from Luxembourg originally and the Ministry of Economy has the same type of program. We are discussing with them right now to get some quotas involved for the programs that they have specifically. However, what they wanted first was an incubation program for women
24:23
because they said they cannot have quotas if there's not enough on the funnel from the beginning. So I think that's really important to make sure that we have that funnel full. It doesn't have to be 50-50, but at least 60-40. And that way you can really put some pressure on the governments as well to get that,
24:42
even if it's not quota, but some natural. If it's quota or naturally, it doesn't really matter, but we have to get some more diversity into these programs, I agree. I think we have one more question, or time for one more question, unfortunately. Hi, my name is Mary. I'm originally from a construction company
25:01
and we had a lot of questions about how female founders are supported, but maybe a question, what can we do ourselves? So for example, I do have an idea. I do have an idea of what I want to do, but as you said earlier, I do not have the skills for it. I work in tech, but I'm not a programmer.
25:21
I'm not an AI specialist. Where do I actually find the people to work with before even starting to raise money, just to get a prototype, for example? Yeah, it's difficult, that's true. It's good if you have good networks. I mean, my example is I was in the industry. I had a good network, so I got to know people. I got to know people that know how to program,
25:42
that had some further ideas. So if you are in construction, I don't know if there are some, I don't know if there are some Twitter groups with people that you might connect. Also, there is also like the digital, they're like fintech ladies. So the more and more like I think networks are also forming on certain topics. I don't know, I'm not so much into construction.
26:01
I cannot tell you if there is some network there, but this helps often if you just connect with people that do work in technology. Mike? Thank you. The problem is that in construction, the network on digitalization itself is very, very small, and the female quota in digitalization
26:21
or in construction evil is even smaller. But when you do it together with a man, I mean, it's also good if you have like a mixed culture. You have to find the men who are into it. Yeah, but we can also meet afterwards because I think we will be running out of time.
26:41
I'll get this little sign on my roadside. So maybe you can wait two minutes and then we just approach you and we'll discuss further how we can actually help you to get to the good networks. I would like to thank everybody on this panel for their time and also for flying in from Luxembourg, Uganda, and also for coming from Berlin.
27:01
Thank you for the audience. And as I said, we're here for a while, so if you have further questions, just approach us anytime and we would love to discuss further. Thanks with you. Thank you so much.
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