Diahala Doucouré, Pukhraj Ranjan and Alexis Bernadechi, European entrepreneurs, spent a month together at the end of last year with other professionals in the regions of Medio and Alto Vinalopó, south of Alicante. The French Clémentine Savoie, solutions development manager and member of Clem by Clem, intervened in that experience that she reported yesterday during the talk “The Break Fellowship-Incubating Women Entrepreneurship”, held on the second day of the Valencia Digital Summit, the event organized by Startup Valencia in the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències. “It was a transformative experience, living and collaborating with women led us to connect,” Savoie summarizes.
That project, baptized as “The Break Vinalopó” – an initiative financed by the European Union and launched through the School of Industrial Organization – was for Diego Tomás, CEO of Genion Lab, a program to “generate relationships, enhance synergies between women entrepreneurs and businesswomen and collaborate in generating challenges.”
Tomás experienced it firsthand, since the firm he directs was selected from more than 60 organizations and ended up being the only entity in the Valencian Community participating in the program, which will be repeated in 2023. Genion Lab is a coworking space that offers work in community and is located in Petrer.
Both Savoie and Tomás explained yesterday in a conversation moderated by Salvador Enguix, delegate of La Vanguardia in the Valencian Community, how this project can be a reference to promote female entrepreneurship, which still has a lot of room to grow.
After the experience, Tomás ended up convinced of the infinite possibilities, as he assured that visiting young high school students with the entrepreneurs involved, to whom the project participants explained their business ideas in relaxed talks, showed him the way to go. “I could see the surprise in many girls when they received a talk from businesswomen. I think that giving them a model of a businesswoman, a reference, will always mark them,” he assured.
The project, “quite a challenge” in the words of Tomás, included various visits to Alicante companies such as the office furniture manufacturer Actiu and talks with other entrepreneurs, such as the one given by David Moreno, founder of the Hawkers glasses brand from Elche.
Training and learning, but also relaxed dinners and some paella, an adventure somewhere between leisure and work that left a great taste in Savoie’s mouth, who was encouraged to promote the Think Tank Femion, a space for European women, with her colleagues. committed to solving local and global challenges. She also created a Genion women’s group, in honor of her journey. The entrepreneur points out that it is possible to improve “the situation of imbalance that we currently have” and focuses on its profitability: “Companies run by women achieve a higher return, up to 63%,” she estimated yesterday, referring to international sources.
For Clémentine Savoie, the key is to generate a “paradigm change” in which the financing, the money, truly reaches the projects led by them, since she recalled that in 2021 of the total projects invested by venture capital, only one 1% had been dedicated to projects led by women.
He opted to promote an ecosystem “that is more inclusive” and free up the “gender space”, even rethinking the methodology for choosing projects, with neutral questions that downplay the importance of the physical appearance or the first impression, fundamental in the pitch, the usual tool to present any entrepreneurial project in public. “It is the most subjective part of the process and some studies show that attractive men achieve the best results, so I think things can be rethought to favor female entrepreneurship,” said the businesswoman. “We are tremendous because with less money, we manage to do more,” she concluded.
Their commitment to female leadership makes sense in an environment in which women are still a minority, despite progress. Also in Valencian territory. The latest figures from the Valencian Community Startup Observatory 2023, presented yesterday on the second day of the Valencia Digital Summit, place the percentage of startups that have at least one co-founder on the team at only 37%.
In a context of growth – the results of the report indicate that the Valencian ecosystem increases both in the number of startups (16%) and in the number of agents that comprise it (14.31%) – the room for growth is wide. The event, which celebrates its sixth edition this year, has had more than 400 international investors with an investment portfolio of more than 8,000 million euros, 500 speakers and the call of more than 1,500 startups. A good part of its 12,000 attendees were still enjoying the event late yesterday afternoon, which rewarded two startups and which concluded with an afterwork in the Science Museum.
