Events - EIC Investor Day Women in Tech 2.0: bridging the gap during COVID-19

The EIC Investor Day Women in Tech 2.0 is rapidly approaching. On 17 December 2020, 19 women entrepreneurs from EI-funded companies will pitch their BioTech MedTech and ICT-solutions in front of prominent investors. Furthermore, the event will feature three panels with interesting speakers who will present their views on the influence of COVID-19 on women led companies, new opportunities that will arise as well as discussions on breaking the glass ceiling. If you are interested to learn how the EIC-funded women entrepeneurs faced the crisis and learn more about the measures taken by the EIC, as well as the EIC fund - the venture arm of the EIC Accelerator investing equity in innovative companies – join us on 17 December 2020 by registering here. 

The panels 

Following the welcome speech made by Luisa Prista, Director of Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME), the day will kick off with a panel discussion “Women entrepreneurs vs crisis”. The managers of three EIC companies Ciara Clancy (CEO of Beats Therapeutics Ltd), Rosa Sala (CEO and co-founder Nubart) and Lorena García, Managing Director, company ADBioplastics will present their journeys through the COVID-19 storm, while crisis coach Eléonore Venin and Katrin Geyskens, Partner at Capricorn Partners will speakabout the influence of crisis on women led companies and how to support them.

 

During the second panel “Investment landscape during the COVID-19 crisis” four women investors Priya Guha - Venture Partner Merian Venture, Member Innovate UK Council, Bindi Karia - Innovation Advisor, Draper Esprit Venture Capital partner, EIC Board Member, Selma Prodanovic - EBAN Vicepresident and Namratha Kothapali - Speedinvest Senior Associate - will debate how the crisis influenced the investment landscape from the perspective of women led companies and investors.What were the main challenges, but also what opportunities arose?

 

Last but not least during the panel “Shifting leadership, beyond the “cracking” glass ceiling” four female tech leaders, investors and corporates - Simone Brummalhuis Partner Borski Fund, Aude Guo co-founder and COO Innovafeed, Laura Gonzalez-Estefani EIC Board member  and Founder and CEO at TheVentureCity and Elaine Deehan Ireland Country Manager at Starling International will discuss about the importance of having diversity in companies on senior and high positions and what measures can be taken to improve this. 

Background 

The event builds on the success of last year’s first ever EIC Women in Tech event: “Empowering Women Innovators: Enhancing Women’s Access to Finance”. This event  showed the need of including quotas for the evaluation process (i.e the pool of the best applicants invited to interviews will be composed of at least 25% of applications submitted by SMEs (including start-ups) led by women CEO (or equivalent position), an action that was implemented within the EIC Accelerator from the May cut-off. By implementing the quotas, the EIC managed to increase the share of women-led companies from 7% to 34% in the last selection round. However, the gender gap remains significant, only 16% of start-ups in Europe have at least one woman as the founder/co-founder, while < 6% have only female founders.

While the funding disparities remain significant, with 90.8% of all capital going to men-only teams this year (even higher than 90.3% in 2019), the Atomico report shows small signs of positive progress for the future. 2020 saw a “record” number of rounds by women who have raised between $10M to $50M, while rounds below $10M, the share seems to oscillate around 6%. Due to the funding gap, but also other reasons, the crisis seem to have affected women led companies more heavy and thus, we want to see how they have faced the crisis, and understand if the support provided was sufficient to help them overcome it. 

You can discover the companies pitching at the event on the following link > https://discover.dealflow.eu/lists/18439?share_token=MjlhODg5NGRkOTM3Nj…