One Less Excuse
Winners of Women Startup Competition 2019 revealed
“One less excuse” was the first words and title of keynote speech by Alexandra Veidner, CEO of Women Startup Competition.
As she said, with the finalists lineup at London Final event after running their mentoring and pitching events in 9 countries, WSC would like to prove that there are amazing female-founded startups, they are from all kinds of verticals, industries, and they need help to gain visibility, access to capital and networking opportunities.
“One less excuse” was referring to the fact that only 2,2% of VC capital is going to female-founded teams, and although the problem is very complex, one reasoning often said by investors that they don’t know any good female-founded teams.
Genetika+, led by Talia Cohen Solal, was crowned the winner of the Women Startup Competition 2019. A start-up from Israel developed cutting edge technology to determine which drug to treat depression will be best suited to each patient, making treatment more effective, more quickly.
The first ever winner of the beauty accelerator programme was Jennifer Young, founder of Beauty Despite Cancer who has created specialist beauty products for cancer patients.
Across Europe Women Startup Competition’s programs was sponsored by AVON in 2019, and as part of the partnership a beauty acceleration programme was also launched.
Second place went to planA.earth, a fascinating data-science team fighting against climate crises. As their slogan states there is no planB for our earth. Third place went to AMB-Technology.AI. with their human centric AI with use cases in work safety, fashion, mobility, etc.
The first ever winner of the beauty accelerator programme was Jennifer Young, founder of Beauty Despite Cancer who has created specialist beauty products for cancer patients.
“The winners are us, the world, having these amazing women solving huge problems with the help of technology and R&D,” said Alexandra Veidner, CEO Women Startup Competition when announcing the results.
Women Startup Competition (WSC) brought together the winners of the local semi-finals in 9 countries and the three top start-ups from the new-for-2019 online beauty accelerator programme to pitch their start-up to the panel of judges.
The judging panel comprised WSC’s CEO Alexandra Veidner, Mintel’s EMEA President Steve Charlton, Louise Scott, Avon’s Chief Scientific Officer, Millie Kendal MBE, founder of the British Beauty Council, Fiona Dent, founder of Makerversity, and Volker Hirsch, Partner at Amadeus Capital.
Regarding the launch of beauty acceleration program Alexandra Veidner, CEO of WSC explained “Access to knowledge, experts, distribution channels, pricing and data is a huge help for start-ups at an early stage; on the other hand, engaging with innovative start-ups is a great route for big companies to achieve their own innovation goals.This is why it was an important step to partner up with AVON. Our objective is to provide tangible support for female founders besides visibility.”
Louise Scott said: “We are really excited to partner with Women Startup Competition. There is a great deal of alignment in our missions — fostering entrepreneurialism among women and encouraging innovation that benefits society. I’m a scientist at heart, so am passionate about new and exciting innovation so I’d like to congratulate all of the inspiring, courageous finalists.”
