The Hottest New Trend Among French Women? Founding a Startup
By Caroline Ramade | Managing Director of Paris Pionnières
Marie Schneegans is not your average 23-year-old girl. She co-founded a multi-million dollar company called Never Eat Alone, she runs a staff of 17 employees with offices in Paris and New York City and she works with more than 70 firms with at least 500 employees each.
Marie is one of many ambitious female entrepreneurs who are propelling France’s growing tech ecosystem forward. In fact, according to a recent Stripe study, one out of four French companies created since 2015 have at least one female entrepreneur.
The time is ripe for women in France to break the glass ceiling. Earlier this year, the government introduced a new initiative to bolster gender equality in tech, partnering with 15 female-driven companies to create campaigns in high schools and universities that promote engineering and computer science studies for women. The initiative also encourages French companies to hire more women, supports female entrepreneurs who want to start their own companies and helps women find jobs in the tech sector.
Paris is the hottest place to become a female entrepreneur in Europe. According to a study by Compass, 21 percent of women are founding startups here. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that women are the future of the economy. We approach issues differently and we are redefining what traditional leadership looks like.
I’m proud to say that Paris Pionnières, the first accelerator for female entrepreneurs in Europe, is dedicated to helping female founders and co-founders and has supported more than 350 startups. Our goal is to reveal the entrepreneurial potential that lies within each woman. For more than 12 years, Paris Pionnières has contributed to building up Paris as the European capital of startups. Today, we are continuing to fuel that momentum with our intrapreneurship program, 66 miles, an innovation circuit for female managers.
The energy in Paris is palpable and nowhere is this more evident than at Station F, a huge new 366,000 sq. ft. campus for tech startups that recently opened in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. Station F is home to 1,100 startups, many of which were selected by its corporate partners, which include Facebook, Zendesk, Vente-Privée, HEC and Microsoft. Roxanne Varza, the director of this startup megacampus, wanted to create a place where all types of people could thrive. Station F is not just for MBA or engineering school grads. She’s looking for more international talent, more women and more people from underprivileged backgrounds. It’s not a coincidence that 40 percent of the startups selected for Station F’s founders program were founded by women. And before directing the largest startup campus in the world, Roxanne was busy leading Microsoft’s startup activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for three years. She also co-founded StartHer, an organization that strives to empower young women in technology through events, education, networking and international community.
Marie Ekeland is another trailblazing female in the French Tech ecosystem, proving that the VC world isn’t just for the boys. The daughter of famous mathematician Ivar Ekeland, Marie followed in her father’s footsteps, studying math and computer science at the University Paris-Dauphine and later found a position as a computer scientist at JPMorgan in New York. In 2005, she joined Elaia Partners, a VC firm in Paris, and carved out an impressive investing career, backing Criteo, Teads and Scoop.it. Now the co-founder and CEO of venture capital firm Daphni, Marie has made it her mission to develop an investment approach that borrows a few lessons from Silicon Valley, but is also tailored to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of the European startup scene. Daphni has its own platform that allows startups to submit their proposals online. These proposals are evaluated by the “daphnipolis,” a community of more than 200 influential innovators, entrepreneurs, executives, academics, artists and advisors who provide feedback and guidance to the firm.
And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Fleur Pellerin, the woman considered by many to be the architect of France’s tech startup scene. For two years, she served as minister for small and medium-sized enterprises, innovation and the digital economy, focusing on education in areas like big data and coding. She also sought to boost funding for startups. The government created a public investment bank called Bpifrance in 2011, which invested more than €1.6B in France’s tech industry between 2013 and 2016. Today, she’s trying something new and getting her feet wet in the VC scene. She set up Korelya Capital in November 2016 and raised €100M to invest in French and European startups that deal with artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning.
The progress we’re seeing today is encouraging, but we still face an uphill battle when it comes to changing public perception of women in startups.
“One of the biggest myths about entrepreneurship is that it is harder to succeed when you are a woman, said Morgane Canastra, co-founder & CEO of WYKER, an app that uses artificial intelligence to recommend concerts, music festivals and shows. “As a female entrepreneur, I’ve heard a lot about this subject. I think it’s a misconception that scares off many women from pursuing their dreams. Personally, I have never felt inferior to any male entrepreneur. The only way to break this myth is to dive in headfirst, support each other and prove them wrong.”
Camille Rumani, co-founder of VizEat, the French startup that created a social dining platform that enables travelers to dine in a local’s home, has a similar point of view. “People usually don’t expect women to be relevant in technology fields. But when you prove to them that you know what you’re talking about, they start looking at you differently. They’re surprised in a good way, I guess you could say. My cofounder always says ‘Vision without execution is just hallucination.’ Diving in and learning to code has been a huge game-changer for me. It gave me so much confidence in myself and legitimacy with my peers. My goal is to surround myself with people and entrepreneurs I admire, regardless of their gender. The solidarity between entrepreneurs is really strong here.”
We have the talent, the resources and an entire tech ecosystem all right here in France. Now is the time for all of us — men and women — to rise up and become a startup nation.
About the Author
Caroline Ramade works to promote the emergence of women in tech. She is the Managing Director of Paris Pionnières, incubator and leader network for women entrepreneurs with more than 350 startups created in 12 years. Mentor at Techstars Paris and ambassador for the MIT Innovators Under 35 awards, she is an expert in digital strategy. Before joining Paris Pionnières, she was Deputy Head of the Digital Department of the Paris City Hall, where she developed the My Startup In Paris label.
