You don’t have to look very far to recognise that the entrepreneurial ecosystem has been, and still remains, grossly imbalanced with it comes to the gender mix.
Facts:
- Only 15% of deep tech startups are founded or co-founded by women
- Women-led startups raise less funding that their male counterparts – across Europe, only 2% of venture capital goes to all-female teams and around 5% to mixed teams.
- Venture Capitals lack gender diversity globally: 85% of investment committees are all-male and only 13% of VC partners are female
Aiming to tackle these statistics, EIT Food, EIT manufacturing, and EIT Urban Mobility have joined forces to create Supernovas, an initiative with the ultimate aim of bringing more women into the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Supernovas’ 3-month Rocket-up programme specifically addresses international expansion efforts for post-seed/pre-series A female-led startups based in the EU or EU related countries that are working in EIT Urban Mobility, EIT Manufacturing or EIT Food focus areas.
By scouting and identifying industry experts that can fulfil the needs of the selected startups, Rocket-up participants receive assistance in accessing new markets through expert advice on the target ecosystem, connections to potential customers and soft-landing resources.
Additionally, the 10 selected startups will receive an organised mission to a target city, access to 4 online events with role model speakers and workshops on internationalisation topics, access to the EIT network (including European cities, industries partners, and investors) and financial opportunities, and increased visibility through EIT communication channels as an EIT Community supported venture.
As a point of clarity, according to Rocket-up, “a female is everyone identified as female. Our definition for female-led startups is: the CEO is woman, 50% of founder members are women or 50% of capital is held by a woman.”
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