To all Female Founders & Investors - Join Us for Our End-of-Year Celebration 🎉 🥂
As we approach the end of 2024, we are thrilled to invite you to our End-of-Year Event dedicated to celebrating the achievements of female founders & investors! Co-organised together with FounderFuel.vc, s16vc: Portfolio News & Jobs and Miro ❤️
Meet other female founders and investors who are making waves in their industries. Create valuable connections that could lead to future collaborations!
There will also be an amazing panel discussion, tasty catering, and in-house DJ!
Don’t miss out! Spots are limited. Secure your spot via the link in comments 👇
#girlsjustwannahavefunds#femalefounders#femaleinvestors#yearendcelebration
Event Creator for Founders and Investors 🔸 The Femme Table 🔸 High-stake events & cutting-edge experiences 🔸 From Vegas parties to Parisian soirées to global summits 🔸 Always seeking adventure
The Countdown to The Femme Table!
With less than a week left until our inaugural Femme Table dinner, excitement is building!
The mission is simple but powerful: to create a supportive environment where female startup founders can seamlessly connect with investors and industry experts. This fosters collaboration, provides vital capital, and shares expertise that fuels business growth.
The Femme Table is:
✨ A space where female startup founders and investors can authentically connect at a deeper level than traditional meetings or events.
✨ A space that accentuates our natural strengths of empathy, adaptability, collaboration, and intuition.
✨ A space that fosters meaningful connections, fuels growth, ignites innovation, and champions diversity in the startup ecosystem.
I'm proud to share that incredible female founders from emerging startups across sectors such as AI, healthcare, software, fintech, the future of work, and more will be in attendance at our first event! This event is designed to create impactful connections within our community in an intimate and thoughtful way.
And I only have 2 seats left for female investors who want to meet and support these trailblazing female founders! 🔥
If you’re a female investor who’s interested in getting involved, I'd love to share more about the trailblazing female founders who will be attending and learn about your company.
Let's ignite change, fuel growth, and make waves in the startup world—one fabulous dinner party at a time. 👯♀️
#TheFemmeTable#FemaleFounders
Beauhurst data for H1 2023 highlights a stark reality: only 3.5% of equity investments reached female-led businesses.
If you do not know me, I would like to introduce myself. Hi! I am the co-founder of vivv.ai, a marketing AI co-pilot looking to change the marketing landscape as we know it.
Navigating the startup landscape as a female founder at Vivv.ai has been both challenging and rewarding. On this International Women's Day, I want to thank some of the many people who have inspired and helped me in my career so far.
Simona Marmina - You showed me that kindness is not weakness. Your determination, fire, and support (even now) are something I am so grateful for. (Love from Wawa ahahah!)
Yang Li - You empowered me and made me feel heard. You showed me that individuality and brainpower can solve any problem.
Michelle Arnold - What can I say about you? If I become half the woman you are I will know that I have succeeded in life.
Sam Kapp - You believed in me, pushed me, and laughed with me. You are an incredible manager and I cannot thank you enough.
Frank Kavilanz - You showed me how powerful vision in a leader can be.
Fiona McKinnon - You paid attention and cared deeply. Your advice at times has been paramount. I have a huge respect for you and the way you tried to push me forward in my career and personally.
Brandon K. - not only are you my wonderful co-founder, but you are also my biggest supporter. You have time and time again fought for me to learn, earn, and be the best version of myself.
There are so many more of you who have shaped my career and life in so many ways, and I feel like I should do a series about how my career is a patchwork of other people going out of their way to inspire, teach, and help me. I am forever grateful.
🔍 Join the conversation! Share names of inspiring female founders in the comments, and help us build a supportive community that amplifies the voices of remarkable women👇🏽🌟 #FemaleFounders#InternationalWomensDay#TechInnovationThe Female LeadFemale Founders Rise
P.S. - If you want to know more about what we are building, and are really interested in investing in female-led businesses - DM me
Connector of people, processes and purpose | Making change less scary | Change and Project Management Consultancy | On a mission to sprinkle kindness everywhere | Chair of Governors
Great takeaways on what investors look for in a project:
🏆 Passion of the Team & Chemistry (do they get along?)
🏆 Simplicity of the product
🏆 What have you already built?
🏆 Pain Point that product solves
🏆 Who are the partners
🏆 Talk to the customers
🏆 Measure Impact
Let me know what else you took from the session.
To me, the political news of the past 24 hours in the US and in Germany have been very saddening. At the same time, it has become even more obvious that our mission at the Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund to drive equitable access for everyone in the economy - independent of gender - needs to be pursued further - and with even more drive and help from our allies. I want our daughters to grow up in a world where all jobs are attainable to them - be it the CEO of a publicly listed company, the President of a country or a riding instructor (the current dream of my older daughter). I also want them to feel safe in this world. And of course: I want the same for our sons!
My personal purpose is to show my daughters the power of the female. And I intend not to make this a fight, but rather a collaboration. I intend to join forces with everyone who also believes that we need both, yin and yang, in equal measures, for everyone to benefit.
When Fabiola, Bettine and I stumbled across the name Auxxo, we were thrilled, as it described our purpose very well: The Greek goddess Auxo is Zeus' daughter and responsible for supporting the plants and animals to grow and flourish, by bringing summer.
Since 2021, we co-invest in teams with at least one female founder - translating into a portfolio with a gender split of almost 50:50. With our unique angle, we outperform the market and bring companies to the VC world that would probably be passed over otherwise. Also, we support the founders to stay sane and we hold space for them so that they in turn can do the same for their employees, customers, investors, and families.
In the end, this very collaborative approach will bring growth and prosperity for us all - I am convinced of this! So please, let us roll up our sleeves and do everything we can to create this bright future - together.
Recently I asked women founders about their experiences with angel groups and angel conferences. I am deeply appreciative that so many took the time - and trust - to share with me.
Based on their stories, here are some top line take-aways we’re taking seriously at FBomb Angels as we imagine the future of Pitches 2 Bitches:
> Be as transparent as possible, as early as possible, about our investment thesis and decision-making process.
> Be as helpful as possible, and as honest as possible, about what kind of help we can or can’t offer beyond the check.
> Rethink winner-take-all scenarios where participation is a sunk cost for everyone else.
> Be timely, honest, and supportive in delivering feedback. Also, invite feedback.
> Respect and value the person – not just the opportunity their company represents.
We don’t just want to see more women investing. We want to see more women investing differently. That means modeling how to show up at every stage of the deal, and makes our final take-away: be intentional about how we show up, at every stage of the deal.
SEO and Content Strategist for Female Founders | Simplified Strategies to take your brand's visibility to the next level | Founder Her Marketing By Design | Passionate about Helping Women BE Visible
Bravo Elena Brant!
This is exactly what I meant last week when I commented on Diana Hu post about #GPU and many other Y-Combinator posts, which I'll share in my comments.
I stated:
"Helper of more and more overserved basic founders. Look forward to future Y-Combinator leadership when more founders reflect the world around us and less like the stereotypical YC Founder. New leadership is unfortunately much needed. Things were never meant to last forever, and I stand strong on the clear nepotism happening. It's revolting to see their cluelessness. But yeah, invest in the GPUs."
They believe that not being "#racist" or "#homophobic" is enough to claim #diversity among #founders. They have to also waive #agism, #sexism, #prejudice, #nepotism, and their bias thoughts about founders with #disabilities. Many other #accelerator are guilty of following #YCs trends.
Y-Combinator perpetuates a tech world that no longer exists, which they cling to for dear life:
*Youthful
* Male
* Not a Parent (or not obviously one)
* Middle Class (or at least visually middle, whatever that means)
* Worked at Google, Meta, or another FAANG (which literally doesn't care about founders or even developers)
* Went to a top university (they don't care unless you're from Stanford, Harvard, or working with those universities, or in a field that "sounds" "smart")
TechCrunch and other tech outlets have done a poor job covering these issues. As Y-Combinator attempts to create a startup school in San Francisco, and with the president of Y-Combinator running for Mayor (please do not vote this loser in), you'll see this facade of a tech founder continue to be perpetuated, making them more out of touch than they realize.
Being a decent leader with values that reflect the current world is what's actually trending. If they understood this, they wouldn't be failing at getting valuable startups that stand the test of time.
Grit and tenacity matter, and I can promise you that's far from a criteria they have. They believe "RISK MITIGATION" means:
* Youthful
* Male
* Not a Parent (or not obviously one)
* Middle Class (or at least visually middle, whatever that means)
* Worked at Google, Meta, or another FAANG (which literally doesn't care about founders or even developers)
* Went to a top university (they don't care unless you're from Stanford, Harvard, or working with those universities, or in a field that "sounds" "smart")
But don't just take my word for it. Go crazy and look at all their founders, you'll catch on pretty fast.
People like Elena is what #YC is afraid of because founders who are not subservient is deemed as difficult. So its YC-Way or the highway and clearly you see they sent Elena and her brand spanking new QT baby girl to the street so founder can have a "Y-Combinator" experience 🤦♂️
#MayorLondonBreeds probably should look into this as well doesn't sound like the person trying to replace you wants an SF with mommies in it.
Thank you Lauren Ingram for sharing.
Enterprise Marketing Lead UK at Amazon. Founder and podcaster, Next Big Thing. Women in tech advocate. Formerly at Meta.
Unbelievable.
This female founder was asked to take her cooing 6 month old baby out of Y Combinator's Female Founders conference (read that again)...!
It was suggested that she take the baby for a stroll outside so people could get the "full experience of the conference".
Not even a screaming baby, just a baby that was burbling away during a keynote by another female founder about... drumroll please: pregnancies while growing companies and pumping milk while fundraising. Seriously.
I applaud Elena Brandt not only for committing to flying 6 hours for a conference like that with a small baby in tow, but for sharing her experience - and also she's been incredibly fair about the whole thing.
She doesn't blame the individual - she correctly points out it's indicative of a culture that sits behind that comment (both at company level and industry). YC have yet to respond to her posts about it.
Business is (still!) not suited to the "full experience" of motherhood - it's time we changed that.
#BYOB#bringyourownbaby#womenintech
We noticed that less than 50% of our clients were female
That got us thinking - Why?
And our research told us:
↳ The startup ecosystem doesn’t have many female founders.
The female founders we worked with had:
→ Ability to drive inclusivity and diversity, resulting in best ideas.
→ Demonstrated remarkable resilience in their work.
→ Unique approach and innovative perspectives.
Hence, we came up with a plan to support them.
We launched the YVLC Female Founders Program earlier this year, on women’s day.
▶ How We Built it:
→ Spoke to our female clientele to understand the problems they faced
→ Provided multiple solutions in brainstorming sessions and piloted it with a few.
▶ Who We Serve:
→ Female founders and women-led businesses.
→ Startups, SMEs, and Corporates where women are the majority owner.
▶ What does it include:
→ Free consultation calls and healthy credit lines.
→ Preparing legal strategies for their business.
📌 Comment ‘Female Founder’ to have the full details about the Female Founder Program.
📍Tag your favourite Female Founder in the comments.
📸 This picture is from our recent YVLC team hurdles.
https://bash.social/e/K5yaOVSaKQjH/277003