“A society that does not allow women to reach their potential, misses out on tremendous new possibilities, economic development, and job creation.”
Over the last decade, the global economy has expanded gradually, and the number of startups and new enterprises has risen steeply. It’s not surprising that the vast majority of them were started by males. While many women aspire to be entrepreneurs, they frequently find it more difficult to succeed. Less favorable conditions, pronounced cultural prejudices, and a lack of business resources such as money, capital, training, and growth become a huge hindrance for an aspiring woman.
Some women have great entrepreneurial goals on an individual level. However, if we go beyond the lofty individual and political goals and look into the numbers of how many women own businesses reveals a fairly depressing balance.
Starting a business is a challenging task for anybody, regardless of gender. Key hurdles for startups include raising capital, gaining a better knowledge of their consumers, entering new markets, recruiting skilled staff, and navigating a complicated regulatory framework. However, there are additional hurdles for female entrepreneurs.
Fortunately, there is a rising investor movement to identify and promote female-led companies. Impulse4women is a business that invests in female entrepreneurs.
The Starting Point
Taryn Andersen, a Venture Capitalist, identified challenges for female entrepreneurs seeking investment. She claims to have noticed how females had different and difficult encounters with investors than men. Taryn was also able to appreciate how tough it was to locate female-led tech entrepreneurs as an investor. It was then that she saw a market need for Impulse4women.
“My father has impacted me greatly,” shares Taryn Andersen, co-founder, and CEO. “He has been an entrepreneur since I was young. He has always supported and respected my ideas, listened to my expectations, and built up my self-esteem.”
Impulse4women currently has over 4000 startups led by female entrepreneurs in their ecosystem. They are in contact with 6,000 start-ups, and the goal by the end of 2021 is to have 10,000 start-ups in their ecosystem.
Other platforms connect startups with investors, but Impulse4women is the only one that specializes in female technology entrepreneurs. Any entrants focused on assisting females in obtaining funding do not have the environment that Impulse4women does.
“We recognize and appreciate female needs, concerns and strengths, and we have spoken to several women to discover their requirements and how investors in various countries differ.”
When we asked Taryn Andersen what advice she would give to a young entrepreneur she says,
“When you are starting, ensure that there is a need in the market for your product or service and that you are solving a problem. Having good business partners and networking is essential to growing your business. Choosing good mentors means you can avoid mistakes that could take a long time to resolve. If you make a mistake early on, it can take around 3 months to detect and resolve, which is a huge setback for any startup, giving time for competitors to surface. It is important to analyze the market of inventors to know which is the best one for you, based on maturity, sector, geographical location, and the life stage of your startup.”
To be a successful woman entrepreneur Taryn believes that one must build on certain traits that act as a guiding light in times of adversity.
“I believe that everyone faces difficulty. Yes, women have more challenges and hurdles to overcome. There are barriers to jump and the societal pressure that needs to be overpowered. Yet some of us can thrive when things are hard while others appear to have a tough time. Successful people seem to find a method to overtake obstacles and circumvent impediments that utterly stop others. ”
Before signing off we asked the CEO how some women rebound and find a way to conquer tragedy and failure to which she convincingly answers,
“Firstly, they can’t get overpowered by bad feelings or ideas. They take time to proceed, and then they continue to proceed. Their fighting spirit lifts them to look for possibilities rather than desperation. Anyone woman could be an entrepreneur as long as they have knowledge of the sector and an idea that they can grow. Be brave, resilient and have a good team that supports you. It is important to have people involved in your project that love it and feel part of it too.”
Conclusion:
As more investors understand the inherent benefit of providing financing to female entrepreneurs, one can hope and anticipate seeing women capture a much bigger percentage of venture capital investment in the future years.
Impulse4woman are now one of the only firms with a worldwide ecosystem that particularly assists female founders in connecting with investors. They are fast expanding, indicating that there is a market for such services.
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Business Talk is a digital business magazine that caters to CEOs, Entrepreneurs, VC, and Corporates. While working with entrepreneurs and business executives, we focus not only on their achievements. Our mission is to shed light on business entities, including their innovations, technological benchmarks, USPs, and milestones/accolades.
