Why Make Female Entrepreneurship Visible?
20 international career insights empowering you to decide for yourself and create your own future
As tennis legend Billie Jean King rightly said, “You have to see it to be it.” While King helped level the playing field for women – both on and off the court – this message applies to other professional areas. People can better develop into roles they visualize and tend to grow more from interacting with role models.
When successful entrepreneurial role models are accessible, more collaborations, funding opportunities, and available resources tend to appear. One way to make this exchange tangible is to connect aspiring entrepreneurs with seasoned experts who can share methods of achieving success and avoiding pitfalls. (Note this is the mission of FemGems’ brand new Mentoring program, too.)
Fostering entrepreneurship empowers women to actively pursue their ideas, unleash their potential, and create a new future of work.
Late last year, I noticed FemGems podcast #35 guest Aina Abiodun, reiterated why it’s so important for self-made women like herself to go out and speak, to be visible, and to be available for questions. She feels compelled to share her journey–which is 100% worth hearing–and to offer career advice to anyone who asks.
Fast track to Feb 2020: A recent gathering at Target Global VC in Berlin, Germany showed the power of entrepreneurial role-models and networking. In honor of International Women’s Day 2020, it’s a perfect time to highlight this event that enabled cross-sectional interactions to drive new entrepreneurial opportunities for women here in Europe and globally. ✨
In this post, you’ll find insights from four women who shared their deep experience in tech, VC, and startups at a panel event called “My Entrepreneurial Journey.” The energy was really high in that room. So let’s dive in!
Mor Eini, Corporate Program Manager at Axel Springer Porsche (APX) guided the conversation with panelists during “My Entrepreneurship Journey”, an event promoting Israeli-German business connections and coinciding with the WeTech conference. Mor’s background of working in both the German and Israeli tech ecosystem makes her well-versed on the topic.
The audience included an international mix of women in finance, entrepreneurs, investors, and community leaders who benefited from the discussion and networking opportunities afterward.
Each panelist, Yael, Olga, Michal and Nicole, brought a unique voice based on accomplishments and qualifications. This elevated the caliber of the conversation.
- Tech entrepreneur Yael Biran is Product Management Lead at BCG Digital Ventures where she builds and scales ventures across markets and industries. She drives the topic of Social Impact at DV and led its first Social Ventures Program. Prior to DV, Yael worked in companies such as Airbnb, Wix.com and multiple startups in Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Berlin. Her own IoT startup “Flag” which was the first Israeli-German startup to receive the Exist founders scholarship.
- Berlin-based Fintech investor Olga Shikantsov is an Associate at Target Global, who hosted this event. She covers early- and growth-stage startups in Europe and Israel. Olga has worked for the funds Finsight Ventures and Binomial Ventures where she invested in fintech as well as helped with the business development and fundraising for a few fintech & medtech companies. At only 24 years old, Olga is fast-tracking her career with already 14 investments and 3 exits in less than 4 years. Some of the remarkable deals she closed include Raisin, Rapyd, and Zego.
- Entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of “Blat-Lapidot Consulting and Change Management” Michal Blat started out as a social worker. She considered Mother Theresa her role model but soon discovered her own passion for creating and growing companies. Michal founded and managed startups in different industries: Cloud Computing, Banking, Information Security, Training, Leadership and more.
- Entrepreneur, economist, and tech optimist Nicole Buettner is CEO at MerantixLABS. She makes new technologies impactful for companies and people. Nicole is also the Founder of DataQuotient, an AI expert platform. She’s passionate about government adoption of digital technologies and creating future innovation policies. As a member of the Executive Committee of the German Liberal Party, she heads the policy group on Economic Policies. Nicole ran for the European Parliament in 2019 and actively mentors young women entering politics. She’s a volunteer mentor at Startup Teens, encouraging young adult entrepreneurship.
Mor posed questions (paraphrased below) that caused these four professionals to reflect on their careers and offer honest advice.
You’ll find common threads to guide your thinking along your journey and come away with tips to reinforce your own path.
At a high-level, what are the key discoveries in your career? 🔎
- Trust yourself; leverage your network; don’t be afraid of career changes or making mistakes.
- Realize that sometimes you will need to create your own future.
- Be on a radical self-discovery journey. Honestly ask yourself, what am I good and bad at? Where do I need to grow?
What did you learn from a significant moment in your career? 💥
- Evaluate any lack of certainty in yourself. Notice when someone asks your advice, and listen to feedback from the people that matter to you. Consider what advice you can offer others. You’ll find that you can help others develop.
- Take a course that excites you; you may discover a new field, potential collaborators, or even employers.
- Don’t let other people or companies define if you’re doing something right. Decide for yourself.
- Surround yourself with positive leadership, female or not. This can spark motivation.
What challenges affect your daily life and how do you overcome them? 🏄🏽
- Manage your time. For example, if you schedule your life in 30-minute slots, consider trimming that down to 20 minutes intervals to allow yourself 10 minutes to follow-up or process. This helps you to understand the perspective of whomever you met with (e.g. that could be an investor, client, or collaborator) as well as promote analytical thinking.
- Sometimes it can feel alienating being a woman in a disproportionately-male environment. To resolve this, it’s helpful to try to connect personally with male colleagues to avoid feeling left out of the “boys’ club.” Also, guard your work-life balance. Make personal time a KPI and actively prioritize that.
- Find extra challenges! It might sound counterintuitive, but when you work in VC for example, this actually helps you discover new ways to learn and how to help people in startups, who are facing challenges in every direction.
How would you advise people to make powerful moves in their career? 🚀
- Pursue your interests and passions. Listen to your intuition and curiosity. If you realize you get energy from something, follow it! Always consider the opportunity cost.
- Even if your CV seems disjointed, look in different directions to not miss opportunities. Then connect the dots for yourself and others.
- Be on a journey of self-discovery: Apply what you’ve done to where you want to grow. For example, you can use startup skills in a consultancy or infuse your analytical skills in marketing, business development, and design into product management. Adding a keyword to your Linkedin profile like “product” shifts the kind of opportunities that come your way. Amazing engineers and designers can indeed become founders…
How do you deal with any Imposter Syndrome? 🧐
- Learn to mitigate the fear that something about you will be “discovered.” ( Harvard has some good tips here.)
- Listen to informative podcasts (like FemGems 💎) and find interpersonal tools: by connecting with other female CEOs, they can warn you of risks and you’ll collect good people in your network.
- When you enter a new project and eventually succeed, take some time to reflect. Be on a never-ending learning journey and build trust in yourself.
- As a manager, you have the opportunity to show some vulnerability. This empathetic approach can help you connect and grow with your team.
- Embrace ambiguity. Innovation is not comfortable; it’s an experiment. Use it to discover and push your boundaries.
- Take a long-term view. Have a conversation with yourself where you think back and compare yourself now to 6 months ago. You’ll be surprised by what you’ve accomplished.
Embrace ambiguity. Innovation is not comfortable; it’s an experiment. Use it to discover and push your boundaries.
What’s special about the Germany-Israeli business connection? 🌍
Right now, Israel is considered the “magic grail of startups.” There are interesting cultural undertones between Germans and Israeli interactions that must be navigated.
For example, Germans are considered risk-averse while Israelis are considered risk-takers. In terms of communication, “Germans think they are direct until they meet the Israelis,” said one of the panelists. The key is to have a mix of planners and doers on your team. Aim to understand the culture you are in, know the market, user behavior, GDPR regulations, and find a local partner.
How can we increase successful fundraising odds for women? 📈
- Supply more pitch decks to VCs, aiming for warm connections.
- Learn to present yourself and your ideas with confidence!
- Put yourself forward.
- Know what you can do and who you want to work with.
- Learn how to react to stressful situations and build emotional stability.
- Cut short any jokes in bad taste.
- Avoid aggressive arguments; focus on doing your business.
- Learn from people who’ve raised capital successfully: join FemGems upcoming live show where a founder of a venture-backed startup and an investor are going to share first-hand advice on fundraising!
What other educational & networking resources are out there? 🔦
Check out SheEO, Venture Ladies, formation, Clustered and of course, FemGems. You can follow FemGem’s founder Dora Dora for more on female entrepreneurship, and me Elisheva Marcus for more stories out of the Berlin ecosystem.
Thanks to all the hosts, panelists and guests for sharing their experiences. Did you attend this event and come away with something meaningful? Let us know. Have resources to add? Feel free to add a comment below.
Thanks for reading 🙏🏽 & 👏🏽 and happy International Women’s Day! 🙋🏻
All images courtesy of Orel Cohen from Calcalist.
