Attentive attendees at the Female Founders Forum in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin on 30 June (photo by Conor McCabe Photography)
Silicon Republic hosted the inaugural Female Founders Forum in Dublin this week to explore the future of investment in female-led high-potential start-ups in Ireland with entrepreneurs, investors and female leaders.
Delivering keynotes to a packed-out room in the Guinness Storehouse were Julia Hartz, co-founder and president of Eventbrite, and Anne Ravanona, founder and CEO of Global Invest Her.
Each keynote was followed by a panel discussion. The first brought Hartz together with leading female entrepreneurs Grainne Barron (founder and CEO of Viddyad), Leonora O’Brien (founder and CEO of Pharmapod) and Sonya Lennon (co-founder of Frockadvisor), and Dropbox Dublin’s online sales and operations lead Geraldine MacCarthy.
The second panel focused on investment and venture capital and asked Ravanona, Dr Ena Prosser (a partner at Fountain Healthcare Partners), Dr Helen McBreen (venture leader at NDRC), John Kenny (an associate at Delta Partners’ London office) and John O’Sullivan (director of ACT Venture Capital) for their top tips for female founders seeking funding. The afternoon was then signed off with a closing address from Enterprise Ireland CEO Julie Sinnamon.
Following the inspiring event, Ann O’Dea, co-founder and CEO of Silicon Republic, remarked, “I believe Ireland has the potential to really lead the way in bridging the gender gap in tech and the wider STEM sectors. We are small enough, nimble enough and flexible enough to make change quickly. We have a thriving start-up culture, and many of the world’s biggest names in tech located here. We are also increasingly attracting attention from the global investment community, so we have an opportunity to change traditional patterns of behaviour, and to convince investors of the benefits of funding female-led enterprises.”
To summarise the key thoughts of the day, we teamed up with the graphic harvesting team at Think Visual, who created the infographic below.
Women Invent Tomorrow is Silicon Republic’s campaign to champion the role of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It has been running since March 2013, and is kindly supported by Accenture Ireland, Intel, the Irish Research Council, ESB, Twitter, CoderDojo and Science Foundation Ireland.
