WHERE ARE YOU LADIES? where is your passion, your fire🔥🔥🔥, your audacity? According to Digital Digest/Wamda, Startups in MENA raised about $4 billion in 2022, a great 24% increase from the prior year. An anemic 1.3% of this capital raised went to female founded startups.
in the US, According to Forbes, since 2011, the amount of VC dollars granted to teams of only women has ranged from 1.8% to 2.7%.
Navigating the first business for both male and female entrepreneurs can be challenging and requires huge dedication, focus, strategic planning, and continuous learning.
Getting funding means not only accessing much needed capital but also getting support, getting access to a network and more. Not getting funded means female founders are missing out of such opportunities, without mentioning the obvious elephant in the room, where female founders may not be getting equal opportunities to access such funding.
So how should female founders go about addressing this enormous market deficiency?While there is a lot that can be done, here are few tips to help you start to engage:
1- Welcome Setbacks: Setbacks must become your best friend. They are simply inevitable when you're building something new. Don't let them discourage you, embrace failure as a necessary step toward success as each failure will provide you with a fabulous opportunity to learn and gro
Making your business sustainable might require accepting setbacks. For example, it will require a lot of hard work, resilience, access to know-how and more. Even with all of it, sustainability remains a big challenge for young startups. So try, try and try again. if you fail, get up and try again.
2- Create and market a solid business plan: Use a business plan as your roadmap for your business sucess. Outline your strategies, your why, your projections and budget. Include a marketing plan, scenario analysis, and a plan for growth.
Make sure to include your stakeholder engagement and the network of professionals you plan on getting the buy in from.
3- Pitch, Pitch and Pitch again: So are female founders bypassed time and again? or is it the case that they do not pitch enough. Could it be a little bit of both?
Step out of your comfort zone and don't be afraid to push your boundaries. Pitch your business to partners, to advisors, to clients, to board members and finally to investors.
It may be intimidating at first, but will get easier and taking risks can lead to incredible rewards for your business.
Comments