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Story 16 April 2020
Public

Stories: 4 EIC women innovators in the TOP 50 Europe’s most influential women in the start-up and VC space

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Joana Moreira

Women-owned businesses are on the rise, with innovations that announce an encouraging change. But this doesn’t mean that female entrepreneurs have stopped facing obstacles altogether. When it comes to winning funding for a start-up or assume leadership positions in the VC space, women are still under-represented and facing clear hurdles. Despite this unfavourable climate, many female projects are starting off on the right foot and achieving equal success as male entrepreneurs. The TOP 50 Europe’s most influential Women in the Start-up and VC Space is listing some of these players and includes 4 influential women from the EIC ecosystem. Discover here who is on the heels of innovation.

 

 

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Cristina Fonseca co-founded Talkdesk - a platform that allows any company to create a call centre in 5 minutes just by using a web browser. Talkdesk raised more than $24M in the last two years from Salesforce Ventures, DFJ, Storm Ventures and 500Startups. The tech entrepreneur is also the CEO of the start-up Cleverly.ai. The company developed a language-agnostic AI-based customer support assistant and received Phase 2 Grant from the European Innovation Council in 2019. Cristina Fonseca is now Venture Partner at Portugal’s largest independent private VC fund, Indico Capital Partners, focusing on seed to Series A.

 

 

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Kinga Stanislawska is the founder and Managing Partner of the Polish Venture Capital firm Experior Venture Fund. She has been working in investments, banking and finance for the past 17 years. Kinga is active in supporting women-led companies. The VC investor is a mentor in Vital Voices and Foundation for Women Entrepreneurship and also co-founded the ‘European Women in VC’ community of over 400 women in the European and Israeli VC space. She is a member of the European Innovation Council – High-Level Group and attended the Women in Tech event in April 2019. 

 

 

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Julie Ranty has been Managing Director at VivaTech, a Paris-based, but globally facing startup event, for the last four years. She started her career at Canal + group and, in 2014 she created the platform ‘Les Échos Start’ - a new digital media for millennials. In 2015 she was part of the team responsible for launching Viva Technology (VivaTech). The event brings together start-ups from around the world and attracted more than 124,000 visitors and 3,300 investors in 2019. Last year, Julia Ranty hosted the Women Innovators Awards ceremony. 

 

 

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Roxanne Varza runs Station F in Paris, the largest start-up campus worldwide, backed by Xavier Niel. Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France and former Editor of TechCrunch France. She co-founded Girls in Tech Paris, Girls in Tech London, and was the founder of the website Tech.eu. Roxanne is also involved in the Conseil national du numérique (CNNum) - an organisation that works with the French government on digital matters. She’s a former member of the European Innovation Council – High-Level Group.

 

>> Discover here the full TOP 50 Europe’s most influential Women in the Start-up and VC Space. 

 

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.

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