LONDON, May 4: London was the setting of a landmark for
women in tech as the not-for-profit Women Who Tech, and chief sponsor Craig
Newmark, originator of craigslist and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, revealed
the victors of the Women Startup Challenge Europe. Women-guided startup competitors
placed their projects before an admired board of tech business executives and financiers
May 3 at London's City Hall, held by the office of Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Simprints from the UK obtained the substantial award, a funding
of €50,000 cash attributed to the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, and
one-on-one mentoring with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales.
"This is our first-ever international competition and
the response from the tech community has been extraordinary," stated Allyson
Kapin, founder of Women Who Tech, adding, "We had more than 200
applicants, and our finalists included some of the most innovative women-led
startups based in Austria, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain, and the UK."
Simprints has created a low-cost biometric scanner, mobile
app, and cloud platform that could turn out to be the first resource of giving distinctiveness
to the 1.5B people globally who do not have proper IDs by utilizing people's
fingerprints to perfectly connect them to records.
The Audience Choice Award was secured by Lifebit from Spain,
which will obtain $120,000 in cloud facilities from IBM. Lifebit allows actual
genomic analysis—stress-free to use, moveable across groups and clouds, accessible,
reproducible, and time and cost-effective.
The other finalists will each obtain $10,000 in cloud facilities.
The judges comprised Max Kelly, Managing Director of
TechStars London; Marie-Laure Sauty de Chalon, CEO of auFeminin.com; Rajeeb
Dey, originator of Enternships.com and CEO of Learnerbly; and Diane Tate,
Senior Program Manager of Mozilla.
"Supporting women in tech is a big deal, and not just
in the U.S.," revealed chief sponsor Newmark, adding, "The tech
industry worldwide needs more women. We need their perspective and talent. But
only 10 percent of global investor money goes to women-led startups, even
though women-led companies deliver a 35 percent higher return than those led by
men. We've got to invest in talent and close this gap."
Other patrons comprised Rad Campaign, IBM, London's City
Hall, Invisu, and Mozilla.
The 10 finalists are being accommodated at London's Mozilla
for mentoring with financiers and startup specialists Paul McNabb of Episode1,
Charles Thiede of Zapnito, Russell Buckley of Kinder Capital, Diane Tate of
Mozilla, and Georgia Taylor-Foster of Playfair Capital.
This contest commemorated the fifth Women Startup Challenge ever
since June 2015 and the first to be organized outside the U.S. So far over 1,500 women-guided startups have partaken
and approximately $1M in cash and other awards have been given to victors and qualifiers.
No comments:
Post a Comment