Future tech stars shine bright — and inspire — at the AccelerateHER 2019 Awards
When Skyscanner principal product manager Vicki Fraser stepped out of her comfort zone to help judge the AccelerateHER 2019 Awards what she experienced left her inspired — and moved
Earlier this year I was handed a baton of responsibility by a fellow Skyscannerite, and asked to judge the Investing Women AccelerateHER 2019 Awards. Investing Women are a community of women angel investors, women entrepreneurs seeking growth, and those who want to help both. They believe that there is huge potential for more female founders to scale their companies internationally and the awards seek to give the winners the tools and opportunities to accelerate their global growth.
This would be the fourth year the awards had been run, with the prize being a free place on International Trade Missions to Berlin and Dubai, as well as opportunities to make connections, build confidence, meet potential financiers and learn from other founders. Although I strongly suspected that the judging would find me outside of my comfort zone, I leapt at the opportunity to get involved with an event aimed at supporting female founders in Scotland.
Come semi-finals day the setting at the Skyscanner Edinburgh offices may have been familiar, but what I heard and saw from all of the semi-finalists — and what I felt— took me to a very different place. Seventeen female founders (whittled down from 68 applications) gave two minute pitches, and then faced two minutes of questions from the four judges.
You could literally feel the passion of every single founder, working to drive their products forward in extremely diverse markets - from travel systems through offshore wind turbine fixings, to online brand protection and apps designed to increase engagement in science. The judging was incredibly tough, but eight founders were selected to go through to the finals.
All too soon the day of the finals arrived. Prior to the event all of the judges were given detailed information to review — this was intended to help us understand the different businesses and shape our questions accordingly. The stage and audience were bigger and once again the quality of presentations from the eight finalists was outstanding - up a level again from the semi-finals.
Selecting three winners from such a strong field was even more difficult. All of the founders and businesses had (and have) significant potential, but after extensive deliberation we selected Lina Gasiunaite of Biotangents, Corien Staels of Staels Design and Rachel Jones of SnapDragon Monitoring. Dr Carla Brown of Game Doctor was also recognised with the Rising Star award.
The whole experience of judging was inspirational and further deepened my admiration for anyone who founds a business and who has the courage to take an idea and make it real.
Product Managers at Skyscanner often talk about how we can function as start-ups within Skyscanner. Watching the presentations and speaking to the finalists themselves prompted me to think about this challenge in a new light — and forcibly reminded me that I need to approach the issues I experience day-to-day with the same tenacity as the founder-finalists bring to everything they do.
Judging the awards allowed me to see the strength and depth of female entrepreneurship in Scotland firsthand; I am sure that the three 2019 finalists have bright futures ahead of them, and will themselves inspire other women to follow in their footsteps.
Entrepreneurial mindsets a must
While the Skyscanner team may have grown to include more than 1200 amazing people, we’ve stayed true to our startup roots: we have worked hard to stay fast, agile, and when we fail, we fail forwards. Sixteen years after we were founded we’re still growing — if you’d like to help us soar even higher as we enter the next Skyscanner era, take a look at our open roles and get in touch. Entrepreneurial mindsets a must!
About the author: Vicki Fraser
Vicki Fraser is a Principal Product Manager at Skyscanner. She is currently working with a team of amazing engineers delivering core capabilities to our Product Engineering squads, including solutions in the localisation and internationalisation, geo- and engineering-enablement problem spaces. She is passionate about increasing diversity in technology and supporting people from all backgrounds to pursue careers in Product Management.
