According to several researches, especially tech companies are mainly founded by men. But women are on the best way to position theirselves in the male-dominated industry. InternetInnovators.com spoke to some female founders during the dmexco 2014.
The startup industry is overwhelmingly a male-dominated industry. According to the German Association for German Startups, only 13 percent of German startups in general are founded by women. Even though these numbers are quite abysmal, gender inequality amongst entrepreneurs, especially in the tech sector, exists in other nations as well: While women built about half of the smaller businesses in the U.S, they start only 3 percent of technology companies. In the UK less than 1 percent of tech startups are founded by female entrepreneurs, a study of the Global Entrepreneurship Development Institute (GEDI) in corporation with Dell found out.
And yet it would be fatal to think, women won´t launch startups. In contrast to the past, more and more women are interested in technology and are seizing the chance to make a serious mark in a male-dominated business. To be honest, I thought it would be difficult to find a kick-ass startup founded by a woman for this article – unfortunately Marissa Mayer is not founder of Yahoo Inc – but actually, after I pushed myself, it was quite easy. Just think of Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, the famous platform for photos, now owned by Yahoo. Or Julia Hartz, president and co-founder of Eventbrite, an online ticketing service, selling $400 million worth of tickets in the last years.
However, it’s not just their creative skills and their innovative ideas with which women enrich the tech industry. According to a research from 2013 organized by women2.0, technology companies managed by woman achieve 35 percent higher Return on Investments and are 12 percent more profitable than tech companies – That’s enormous!
We actually didn´t count the female visitors at this year’s digital marketing exposition and conference dmexco, but if you took a look at the conference schedule, you may have realized that there have been just a few female speakers listed in the program. Never the less, without those speakers we would have missed some serious aspects and interesting views on the digital industry.
Ashley Swartz, Founder and CEO of Furious Corp., for instance, was one of the excellent female speakers during the dmexco 2014. Ashley is founder of Furious Corp, a programmer-centric ad management platform that enables video programmers to optimize cross-platform video advertising revenue, optimize performance and deliver new ad formats across IP TV channels. Despites her kick-ass company, she had some interesting views and honest words on digital business models as well as the digital economy. In an interview with InternetInnovators.com Ashley Swartz told us more about new challenges and chances for the digital industry, media convergences and pigs with lipsticks – check it out!
Sources
https://www.businessinsider.com/vc-we-are-funding-more-women-founders-2014-7
https://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/women-who-run-tech-startups-are-catching-up