Wetech held its first-ever conference for female tech founders on Saturday, December 9.
Wetech has been creating a community of women committed to empowering and giving other women opportunities since its founding in 2018.
Wetech wants to encourage more women to enter the tech sector by lowering barriers to entry and offering networking, mentoring, and community-building opportunities.
Women still face significant barriers to entering the tech industry, and their participation in it is below par in Africa. Just 10% of tech start-ups have a female CEO, and less than 15% have at least one female co-founder. Fewer venture capital funds are allocated to women-led businesses; in fact, only 3% of venture capital funding in Africa is given to companies led by women.
To achieve its objectives, Wetech organises an annual conference for women in technology. Many women have gathered to talk about the tech sector and ways to increase the number of women working in it. Its inaugural conference for female founders took place this year. Women in the tech industry, female founders, venture capitalists, and female tech leaders graced the event, which had as its theme “Women Defining Tech Entrepreneurship.”
Read also: Female founders, investors to attend WWBA Assembly in Kenya
Contents of first-panel discussion
The Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Lagos served as the venue for this first-ever conference of female founders. Co-founder and chief brand officer of Jamit, Koromone Asabe-Yobaere, welcomed guests and moderated the first panel, which discussed “The Role of Nonprofits and Community Building in Purpose Driven Entrepreneurship.”
The co-founders of Wetech, Flora and Gabriella Uwadiegwu, had discussions on this panel. It also featured Nsikan Ubi, CEO of NUBI Consulting, and Microsoft software engineer Kaosi Anyanwu. The first panel’s speakers covered how NGOs can encourage social entrepreneurship and become self-sufficient.
Following the first panel, there were breakout discussions on a variety of subjects, with panellists covering “The Mind Matters: The Hidden Cost of Burnout and Recovery Strategies for Founders,” “Demystifying the Startup Evaluation: Insights from Investors,” and “Tech for Good: Women Steering Impactful Ventures” among others. “Scaling Up: Growth Strategies for Female-Led Tech Startups” was the topic of the day’s last panel.
In the session “Demystifying Startup Evaluation: Insights from the Investor’s Lens,” Oluwadunni Fanibe, Programme Manager at Techstars, Gabriella, a founding partner at Archangel Fund, and investment analyst Kenechi Eze shared their experiences raising funds and investing. Regarding the topic of conducting due diligence and distinguishing between genuine innovation and hype, Gabriella mentioned that her years of experience operating in a variety of industries and cultures have given her a broad range of knowledge.
Wisdom and discernment are acquired through experience. She also discussed how it is the duty of investors to look for knowledge in fields in which they are lacking. Oluwadunni states that among her evaluation criteria for startups are founders who demonstrate a thorough understanding of the market or industry, tenacity and resilience, and highly cohesive teams. In order to guard against issues getting worse, she also emphasised the significance of keeping investors informed.
The panel, “Scaling Up: Growth Strategies for Female-Led Tech Startups,” featured talks from Sylvester Kay-Adade, LP relations at Ingressive Capital, Uju Uzo-Ojinnaka, founder/CEO of Traders of Africa (TOFA), and growth marketer Kate Victory-Oedema of Founders Factory Africa. When founders were asked how to approach potential partners and collaborators in the early phases of their venture, Kate counselled them to consider partnerships from the outset.
She underlined the significance of creating value and counselled founders to think about the value they can provide to others in addition to the solution they want to build. This assists entrepreneurs in identifying potential partners and assessing their contributions.
She talked about identifying core channels to gain traction with users for your startup and identifying these core channels by experimenting and iterating as they go, drawing from her experience advising startups. In order to accelerate growth, Sylvester emphasised the significance of delegation.
Tips shared with startups
In the panel discussion “Decoding the Art of VC Funding: Pioneering Views from Backers and Entrepreneurs,” Venture capital and fund seeking were discussed by Dolapo Morgan, Investor, Ventures Platform Fund, and Miishe Addy, Co-Founder and CEO, Jetstream Africa. Dolapo provided pitching advice, highlighting the necessity of demonstrating to possible investors some sort of traction, such as revenue or users.
When asked what indicators she and her team watch out for, indicating whether a startup has the potential to grow or fail, Dolapo said that the most important metric for them is the cost of acquiring new customers over time. They search for companies, goods, or services where, over time, the cost of bringing on a new client can drop to almost nothing. Investors view market-creating innovations more favourably; these are solutions developed for underserved markets in which you can be the first or only provider of the solution or you are developing the solution in a novel way.
Drawing on her leadership of the investment team at Ventures Platform, she has discovered that women can increase their chances of funding by being able to sell themselves, projecting confidence, being knowledgeable about their business and industry, and making a strong presentation. Miishe Addy discussed the lessons to be learned from rejection while sharing her experiences with rejection and failure. Negative reviews, in her opinion, can provide valuable information about your company as well as business opportunities.
Early stage startups
The conference speakers also covered the topic of how early-stage startups should manage legal issues. They discussed the difficulties faced by female founders as well as solutions for these difficulties. They also talked about striking a balance between job and mental health.
Nissi Madu, managing partner at CcHub; Kristin Wilson, venture partner at Oui Capital and CSO at Spurt; Ifeoma Nwobu, co-founder and COO at Sendstack; and several other esteemed prominent female entrepreneurs were among the other speakers at the event.
The PitchHer competition, which gave startup founders the chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges and potentially win ₦1.5 million, marked the conclusion of the event. CEO of Mustard Insights Lawretta Egba, CEO and co-founder of Instollar Chinwe Udo-Davis, CEO of Fertitude Dr. Kieva Chris-Amusan, co-founder of Helgg Rhoda Orovwiroro, and CEO of Flow Morayo Ojikutu each gave three-minute pitches.
Morayo Ojikutu made the winning pitch, introducing the audience to Flow, a learning platform for kids, and winning her organisation ₦1.5 million. This year’s PitchHer competition was supported by Archangel Fund, an investment firm that focuses on technology-related startups.
On September 20–21, 2024, Wetech will commemorate “5 Years of Women Redefining Technology and Entrepreneurship.” The goal is to grow the conference by including career fairs and interactive workshops.