A five-figure sum of funding has been granted to the north-east Female Founder Squad to deliver the first cohort of its Startup Academy.
The 10-week programme is aimed at women in technology looking to create a digital product or service start-up.
Squad founder Zoe Evans secured the money from the Scottish Government’s Ecosystem Fund, and it will provide 10 fully funded place for Scottish entrepreneurs.
“The hope is it gives them a full understanding of how to make a robust business model.”
Ms Evans’ start-up support group is building a community of peers to offer help and mentorship, as well as a “pay as you feel” commerce platform that allows new or growing businesses to test or develop products and services.
Startup Academy, due to commence later this month, will be run virtually and feature a number of international partners.
Biggest challenges
Ms Evans, who went full-time with her venture in March last year, said: “The three biggest challenges female founders have across the globe, not just in Scotland, are finding the right community, finding the right support through community and the knowledge base.
“The academy will give them a real insight and knowledge into the methodology frameworks and strategies that we use in tech in order to create a start-up, grow it and then scale it.
“The hope is it gives them a full understanding of how to make a robust business model.
“There’s too many people who think a start-up is the branding and the marketing.
“You can have a really great product and service, but if you don’t have a robust business model that sits behind that and you don’t know how to continue to improve in order to scale, it will fail.”
“There’s too many people who think a start-up is the branding and the marketing,”
She added: “The majority of start-ups do fail and that’s really because there’s not enough knowledge in the back end.
“The academy will give them (participants) a really robust understanding of what’s required.
“And when they are investor ready I would hope the programme will be a feeder into the Female Founders’ investor tool, which matches them with investors.”
Partners on board
Ms Evans has managed to get a number of partners on board to help deliver the programme in a move which she described as “very exciting”.
These include Jennifer Iannolo, founder of women’s leadership group Imperia Global, Barbara Jamieson of Greenock-based legal services firm Jamieson Law and Evelyn Simpson, managing director of women-led angel investment syndicate Investing Women.
Ms Evans said: “Part of the Ecosystem Fund was to invite international speakers to Scotland to help with the educational side and inspire.
“I’m really excited about the partnerships.
“I also reached out to Evelyn McDonald, chief executive of Scottish Edge (entrepreneurs’ competition), to ask her to share information about the academy and within an hour I was inundated.
“There was enough interest to fill two or three cohorts.”
International ambitions
Ms Evans intends to apply for further funding that could attract women founders from around the world.
She said: “I’ve had founders from Kenya, Canada and United States get in touch.
“I would hope in another cohort we might receive funding from other organisations that might fund international spaces as well.
“That would be a really great opportunity.
“These challenges are faced by women across the globe – not just in Scotland.”
New technology events in Aberdeen
Meanwhile, Ms Evans said she was looking forward to Women in Tech meet-ups starting at Neospace, Aberdeen, next month.
She said: “There’s various meet ups in Aberdeen, including things like coding and tech.
“But there are not specific meet-ups for women in tech that I’m aware of.
“That’s one thing we’ve been lacking. There’s appetite for it.
“The aim of the whole Ecosystem Fund is to provide that community and a place to come together with commonality.
“It gives us the chance to find like-minded women and create something that’s not already there.”
