Great idea, but where's your tech guy?
I believe we have a culture problem in tech and it's hindering startups to reach their full potential. Tonight #cphftw organised 'More Women in Tech' and it was open for everyone—including men. I decided to head over the bridge to listen.
Here are my loosely connected notes. The main question addressed was: How do we get more women to start and join tech companies?
IBM, a sponsor of the event, noted that only 3% of tech companies are founded by women, and 6.5% of venture backed startups have a female CEO. In the 80s, 37% of the computer science graduates were women, today that figure is 12%.
Louise Ferslev, founder of MyMonii, spoke about early stage product mistakes. In particular, trying to raise money without a prototype and spending too much time talking to potential partners rather than potential customers.
One investor told me "This sounded like a great idea until you asked me for DKK 3m." Don't do that without being able to show something.
There are no super-natural powers needed to start a company, all you need to have is some patience. I particularly enjoyed her golfing metaphor: stop focusing on the end-result, that will only result in crap. Instead focus on every step in between, and look up once in a while.
She also spoke wholeheartedly about surrounding yourself with great mentors and asking them for help when you're in doubt. Hoping tonight's event networking could generate some of those connections.
Gulnaz, CEO and founder of EasySize, talked about the reason's why you may not want to become an entrepreneur. She highlighted
Lack of financial stability
Stress (it's not cool to talk about, but it's real)
You might fail, actually, you most likely will fail
You're at this party and almost everyone is an entrepreneur:
Irrespective of who you talk to, everyone's gonna say it's great. Then they go home being paranoid about everyone else doing so great.
Camilla Ley, CEO of Queue-It, challenged founders in the room to involve coworkers today as many of the next-generation of women founders will come from today's startups:
Include your employees! They are not going to stay with your company forever anyway, and that's OK! Better to have a discussion about it.
Camilla also pointed out that she's more conscious about personal time, paying for meaningless tasks like cleaning and laundry. As well as ensuring she divides house work equally with her husband.
The open discussion finished with coming up with concrete ideas about what we can do, here are some:
Think multi-modal: all organisations must tackle the problem
Use ambassadors at schools and universities
Create interest groups on specific topics (FemaleTechies, RubyLadies)
What are others in this room doing? "I need help with this"
Give each other opportunities
As a final note, I was surprised that there weren't more men in the audience. Despite the explicit open-call in the invitation:
The lack of women entrepreneurs is not just a women’s issue — it’s everyone’s issue. Everyone in the tech community will benefit from having more women starting companies. [...] This is why this meetup is not “girls only” — everyone is welcome, regardless of gender.
Some comments I picked up after the talks included (paraphrasing):
"It was great that everyone was so honest."
"I'm here to see what other women are doing in Copenhagen."
"A guy asked me if any other men would show up."
"I like the environment, it similar to that of Founder's House."
Thanks @ullerup, @lferslev, @gkhusainova, and more for organising and letting me listen.
For anyone who cares, here are my notes as I wrote them down.
