STATION F: This is what an entrepreneur looks like
At Station F, we hate clichés about entrepreneurs and the startup industry. For example, all entrepreneurs play foosball (uh, wrong). Or entrepreneurs never take vacation (wrong, again). Or that entrepreneurs are all white men with an MBA (wrong and wrong, again).
There are so many ridiculous clichés that we hear about what its like to work in tech and what it’s like to be an entrepreneur — sometimes we can’t help but laugh, actually. At Station F we have entrepreneurs from tons of different countries with very different backgrounds all working side-by-side on campus — both men and women alike. It’s really hard to make flat generalizations about such a diverse population.
40% female founders and counting.
For International Women’s Day, we wanted to show you all some of the incredible women entrepreneurs we have on campus. It may be weird to say this but at Station F we actually haven’t gone out of our way to attract female founders or select them — it’s just something that happened naturally. Approximately 40% of the startups in the Founders Program have a female co/founder — and there are many more women across all our programs on campus. We have women developing some really killer companies, like Euveka (connected robot mannequins), Uptale (immersive VR learning solutions), Copelican (peer-to-peer shipping service), or even Recast.ai (collaborative chatbot platform) — Station F’s first acquired startup, bought earlier this year by SAP. So, as much as we love some of the female role models in our industry, like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, we also want to show that our ecosystem counts many, many more.
The state of women in tech.
People often ask me about the situation for women in tech in France. I genuinely feel there has never been a better time to be a woman in our industry. Yes, this past year was flooded with gender-driven issues and #metoo events — though I hardly heard anything in France. That said, I’m hopeful that road ahead involves more cohesion and support. Today, we have more and more organizations that are waking up and realizing that we need to do something about diversity and inclusion. Women in our industry have never been given more attention, more support or more of a voice. It’s time we take advantage of it.
100 high school students on campus.
While it’s wonderful to see so many organizations celebrating International Women’s Day, diversity and inclusion are about much more than just March 8th. We know that we need to think beyond this date and do something that’s impactful. That’s why STATION F has teamed up with non-profit 100000 entrepreneurs to welcome over 100 high school students on campus to meet with some of our incredible female entrepreneurs. We want to show these kids — both boys and girls — what an entrepreneur looks like. Follow this event live on Twitter.
