Leanne Robers shares how She Loves Tech is closing the funding gap for female entrepreneurs and supporting a new generation to shape a better future
“People don’t always take women seriously in the tech world,” says Leanne Robers. The co-founder of She Loves Tech, which runs the world’s largest start-up competition for female entrepreneurs as well as its acceleration platform for women and technology, has faced both implicit and explicit biases as a female founder.
“Before building She Loves Tech, I was a tech founder myself. At meetings with potential investors, male investors would look past me and speak to my male co-founder instead; many times, they wouldn’t even look at me even though I was the CEO of the company,” she shares.
And she has been called “feisty” multiple times. “I didn’t think that was an issue because I was so socialised to it,” she says. “It took my husband to point out that language matters and some can be dismissive. He said that if it had been a man, that same behaviour [would be described] as ambitious, determined, confident.”
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To overcome these deep-seated biases, Robers started She Loves Tech to put female founders front and centre, highlighting the work they are doing to venture capitalists. “We’re breaking the bias that women don’t build good businesses; we’re putting it right in front of [everyone’s] faces how amazing these companies are. The results speak for themselves,” she says. “Companies have raised more than US$250 million after going through She Loves Tech.”
She Loves Tech recently partnered with Microsoft Asia to bridge connections between female entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angel investors from around the world, moving towards its commitment of unlocking US$1 billion in capital for women-led businesses in Asia by 2030. Robers tells us more.
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