Today we have some exciting news to share with you!
Valerie Hengl will be joining our management team at Female Founders. As a seasoned founder and long-time member of our community, her expertise will help us better cater to the evolving needs of early-stage female founders.
She is excited to get to know our community even better! In her own words:
“I am thrilled to be joining the Female Founders management team and I strongly believe that Female Founders’ initiatives are shaping the future of the startup ecosystem. As someone who’s been a founder myself, I understand the struggles women face in securing investment amidst today’s economic challenges. I’m genuinely excited to contribute to making Female Founders an even more empowering space, hand in hand with our vibrant community.”
We’ve seen the startup market undergo significant changes over the past 24 months, with raising capital becoming increasingly challenging at all stages. This is why we relaunched our Grow F program last year to better meet the needs of early-stage female founders. We are proud to share that our portfolio successfully raised over 15 million euros last year.
Our conference Lead Today. Shape Tomorrow. was also extremely successful in its fifth year. With over 500 participants on-site and more than 5.6 million social media impressions, this underlines the relevance of the sector and the high demand for networking and knowledge sharing.
In the area of leadership and DEI, we’ve decided to focus our efforts on supporting strategic partners such as the European Innovation Council instead of continuing our own programs. In the course of these strategic changes, Amelia Suda-Gosch, who is responsible for Leadership and DEI in the Female Founders management team, has decided to leave the company. We will miss Amelia & wish her all the best in her next adventure.
The outlook for 2024 makes it clear – we need to double-down our efforts in supporting our female founder community. This means an even tighter collaboration between our venture capital fund (Fund F) and Female Founders. One example of this is the startup Sirius. The Fund F team got to know the startup through the investment-readiness program and a few months later was already acting as lead investor in the pre-seed round of the Dutch climate tech company.
Thank you for being part of the Female Founders community. We’re excited about the future and look forward to continuing this journey together. 🤝