Tools for Women Entrepreneurs
Yvonne Bignall,
Chief Confidence OfficeR, UK
"The women unbound report has revealed what some of us have long suspected - that crowdfunding at last provides a level playing field for women to create their own businesses and livelihoods, and to realise their dreams. The opportunity many of us have longed for to create a better life!"
Kathleen Minogue,
Crowdfund Better, LA, USA
"When I launched my own successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in 2012, I had no one to guide me. No one I knew had ever launched a campaign, much less heard of it. Crowdfunding was in its infancy. I didn’t know how to prep for a campaign or how to gauge whether my goal was attainable, but I also had no idea how much the experience of crowdfunding would transform me...."
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Had I waited for someone to give me permission, I wouldn’t be standing where I am standing right now...on my own entrepreneurial feet.
You don’t need to wait for permission either. But unlike me, you don’t need to go it alone. There are women (and men) who have blazed the trail ahead of you. And some of us have even made it our life’s work to help you. You can do this!"
Michelle Rodger,
Crowdfunding Pioneer, UK
"Having worked closely with both female and male crowdfunders it's clear that women are naturals at engaging and encouraging support for their campaigns. Now we know for sure - and why - and here we are bringing together the tools needed to provide the support women need to succeed"
GO TO THE TOOLS
Background
Crowdfunding provides a level-playingfield for women in which they routinely outperform men as entrepreneurs. The data is unequivocal from across the world, and is presented in the report 'Women Unbound - unleashing female entrepreneurial potential'.
Very different or course from all that has gone before and confounding of expectations. The reasons are not hard to find. Women are better at communicating and building relationships and in a world, remade by the internet and the social web, which values collaboration and co-creation, rather than dominance and domination, these skills matter more.
Meanwhile the traditional economy can in many ways be regarded as an old-boys club that which it has started to admit women, albeit very much in its own terms. It was Buckminster Fuller who pointed out that "You never change things by fighting the existing reality" but by building a new one "that makes the existing model obsolete".
Your Vision: If they Like it Enough - They'll Back You
Change is not coming; it's here. The doors are open to all. Rich and poor as well as black and white, male and female. The data tells us that backers are not interested in any of these attributes - they're interested in what your vision is, and what you can achieve. If they like it enough, and you can back it up, then they'll back you.
But this is not simply patronage reborn - it's co-creation, the next stage of the market economy where citizen entrepreneurs have equal and direct access to the market. Can reach out, locally and across the world, to the people who share their vision. Whether it's global, local or just for something they might want, or want to happen.
The result is a huge surge in a new kind of innovation; things that people want and need - regardless of the old market economics where everything had to be mass produced and one-size (or rather design) had to fit-all.
Neither do businesses need now to all be behemoths slugging it out in order to survive. No doubt there will still, and always, be some. But this next phase in the development of market economics supports and favours not just them, but also human scale businesses. From one, two and three people businesses, run by a family or otherwise, through every scale upwards. According to ability and ambition. The human face of Fintech - in the form of crowdfunding and payment technologies - crucially supporting startups, and providing a starting point, just as much as growth and larger ventures.
This touches, and empowers, every one of us. Both because it creates the means to build a livelihood at times and in places where there are no jobs. But it also allows those ventures, livelihoods, to be built around your life, family and commitments - in a way never possible before. No permission required from the boss - because you're your own boss.
Which is why this is so revolutionary. Especially in an age when AI, 'bots and robots are changing the nature of work and redefining what a job is.
Revolutionary because it provides a new environment which lacks the 'normal' barriers that have held us all back. Has all the doors open for you to walk through. You need no permission, no investor, no patron to get started - whether you plan to become a world-beater - or just carve out a decent life, a livelihood for you and your family.
We want to provide the tools to support and empower you. Many of these are the same regardless of gender, race or creed. Some others are specifically for women. Especially we want to provide support to overcome the accumulated weight of low-expectations through many generations. We also want your help to do it - via the success stories of the pioneers. Some of these are here - but we need more.
We want to help bring people together too. Mutual support, especially with those who face or have faces the same challenges, is particularly powerful.
So below are listed some of the tools we've started to compile to help with this for 'New Routes to Funding'. A list we hope will continue to grow in size and importance.
GO TO THE TOOLS
