Boost Your Startup With StartBoosters
With all the research on how diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams, you could probably fill the German National Library. Well, at least a big part of it.
However, if you look at startups, only 13% of founders are female. So much for gender diversity.
Fortunately, we have a new club here in Düsseldorf, that is going to change all this: StartBoosters.
When tackling the gender diversity gap, there are four areas that need action, according to Güncem Campagna, one of the founders of StartBoosters: there are certain soft skills that are lacking, many women have only a little affinity with tech, access to capital is more difficult for women, and finally, the average age of startup founders is exactly in the sweet spot for people looking to start a family. Especially the first three of these areas, are the initial target for StartBoosters.
When it comes to soft skills, women are, in general, more risk averse, and have less self-confidence (or arrogance), than their male counterparts. Typically, self confidence and the willingness to take risks, are key traits for founders. To increase the number of female founders, this soft skills mismatch needs to addressed. The same goes for affinity with technology. Again, in general, women simply are not that tech-minded.
Whether that has cultural or genetic reasons, is irrelevant. Especially because to make more women interested in founding startups, these are traits that can be acquired.
The StartBoosters plan to help with that, through courses and workshops. The program includes courses for building self confidence, and learning how to deal with risk. Lean Startup is a great method for that. Additionally, there will be courses in coding and prototyping, to make people more familiar with tech, and strengthen self confidence in finding solutions to problems a startup can solve.
Those are the two areas that are, or at least seem, to be the easier ones to tackle. When it comes to access to capital, it’s quickly getting more daunting and more complex.
To put it simply, and generalise generously, most capital is managed by men thinking like men, who have a hard time relating to the logic of business plans drawn up by women.
StartBoosters will not just train women to present their business cases in such a way that men can relate to and understand it better, but also connect the female founders to investors, and vice-versa. Courses and connections. Having a look at the founder team of StartBoosters, and the trainers who already committed to the program, it’s easy to see that this team will be able to do exactly that: the founders are among the best connected people in Düsseldorf, especially in the startup scene.
So, teaching necessary startup skills and connecting female founders to investors, what exactly is this StartBoosters thing? A sort of Mastermind group for women? A girls only club? Maybe the best way to describe this, is as a virtual incubator. Virtual in the sense that, unlike famous examples like Y Combinator and Rockstart, this incubator does not require the startups to be located in the same building/room. Incubator in the sense that StartBoosters helps startups to accelerate their initial growth.
And no, it’s not a girls only club. It’s an initiative focused on making the startup scene more gender diverse. Men are welcome, and expected to play an active role.
That’s a very good thing.
The StartBoosters will have their Kick-Off event on April 8th. Their first workshop is already on 19 March. Follow their website or like their Facebook page to get the latest details.
