Introducing APX Female Founder Office Hours and AMA’s
Why are only 15 percent of European founders female?
Anyone can start a company — yet, not everyone does. Only 15 percent of all start-up founders in the EU are female. Despite the leaps and bounds we’ve made with women in the workforce, women in science, and women in tech, women are still woefully underrepresented in the startup scene.
At APX, we invest in very early-stage digital startups in Europe and beyond, and we see the same gender pattern in the ratio of our applications. From the 2000 applications, we receive each year, the vast majority of these come from male-only founding teams. As a result, only 20 % of the companies we have invested in had at least one female founder on their team.
We’re asking ourselves: How’s that?
Our main criterium for investing is clear: We invest in the best teams with ambitions of making a positive impact and creating a healthier, more sustainable future. Selecting the startups we invest in, we don’t distinguish between gender, age, origin, corporality or sexuality — we want to work with the best founders in place. No matter how they look, dress or speak, who they love, believe in, or aspire. We believe in great ideas that scale, in founders with a vision, in people who want to make an impact, and thus we want to work with the best founders and aim to create equal opportunities for everyone.
But looking at our ratio of female founders, we also believe we as APX can do even more to support more (aspiring) female and mixed founding teams kick off projects and receive investments.
We have to ask ourselves: How do we do that?
It’s widely acknowledged that role models can be a motivating factor for entrepreneurial activity, but given Europe currently has the lowest rate of early-stage activity for women compared to other regions, we believe this is very much a part of the problem.
We want to bring more female role models to the front row, and while doing so try to demystify entrepreneurship, detangle the topics of funding, hiring, pitching and more and open an honest dialogue.
This is why we want to make ourselves available for free guidance and are launching two new initiatives specifically to support female founders: Office Hours and Ask Me Anything events.
Free consultation and support in “Female Founders Office Hours ” at APX
The “Female Founders Office Hours” are aimed specifically at female entrepreneurs and mixed founding teams. They are a place for women who founded their own company or are thinking about it alone or with a team. We want to offer a platform for a private conversation about founding and scaling a company, raising capital and finding out if APX or another venture capital investor is the right path for oneself. We might not have all the answers but we are here to listen and share our experiences and advice. We plan to organize Office Hours aimed specifically at female founders at least once per month.
Sharing knowledge in Female Founder Ask Me Anything events
In addition to the office hours, we have launched the event series “Female Founder AMA (Ask me Anything)”, where inspiring female founders, as well as mixed founding teams of our network, share their experiences and learnings. Whether it’s funding, hiring, pitching or something else — we want to answer all questions regarding the journey of founding a startup to make entrepreneurship more accessible. The events are dedicated to (aspiring) female founders and take place in the form of an online panel each month.
Both environments are a safe place for entrepreneurs to voice their questions and doubts. During the AMA, we invite founders and would-be founders to share their struggles and learnings, answer each other’s questions, and network with one another.
Do you still ask yourself: Why do we do this?
Entrepreneurship can be confusing and scary, and it may not be for everyone. But if we all invest our time, passion, knowledge and resources, we can encourage more women to found businesses and to support them on their path to success in order for them to become role models and encourage even more women to found businesses. This will contribute to a more diverse, balanced, healthy and sustainable startup ecosystem — which is, in our eyes, a pretty hopeful future.
You can read more about APX on our website and follow our events on Meetup and LinkedIn
To book free office ours with APX staff, you can use the links below — new slots are added each month.
- Melanie Schröder, Director of Finance & Portfolio at APX: apx.berlin/FFOH-Melanie
- Maja Markowitz, Investment Manager at APX: apx.berlin/FFOH-Maja
- Yoni Goldwasser, Director of Venture Development at APX, apx.berlin/FFOH-Yoni
About APX:
APX is the leading pre-seed VC and accelerator program for very early-stage startups in Europe. Based in Berlin, APX invests across industries in teams building digital businesses — often as their first investor — and supports each team with an investment of EUR 50K, access to an extensive network, and a tailor-made growth program to secure follow-on financing.
