With a high profile panel of judges, chaired by Fiona Scott Lazareff, founder of Divento.com – including Debbie Wosskow, Founder and CEO lovehomeswap.com; Elizabeth Varley, Co-Founder and CEO, techhub.com; Mandeep Singh, Co-founder of streethub.com; and Bindi Karia, Vice-President Accelerator, Silicon Valley Bank – the awards are open to women who are either already involved in a tech-related start-up or who are in the process of launching one. The team are on the hunt for the next generation of game-changing women techpreneurs, either at the conceptual or at the development stage. The two categories are:
Conceptual, which covers women involved in enterprises that have not yet started actively trading and Veterans: For women who play a definitive role in an existing company which has been trading for less than five years, and has a turnover of less than £10m
Fiona Scott Lazareff, Judging Panel Chair, said, “Have you ever dreamt of starting a business, but never quite dared? I believe from my own experience as a techpreneur, that most women are totally capable of succeeding. I also think they are particularly suited to tech-related start-ups which can offer enormous flexibility in terms of where and when you work.
Unfortunately the word “tech” and the idea of starting a business often conjures up images of alien stereotypes: usually male! Yet skills such as marketing, design, sales and team leadership are often just as important. So if you don’t consider yourself to be an expert in MYSQL or PHP or in ROI’s and cash flows, don’t worry: all you need is the ability to find the right people who are.
What you do need is imagination and resolve. I have launched Techpreneurs.co.uk to encourage women to set up tech-related businesses. The idea is to pull established and would be techpreneurs together so that we can share our resources, our knowledge and contacts to make women techpreneurs a phenomenon of the 21st century.
There is nothing new about the movement to encourage more women into tech jobs where there are jobs to be filled and a painfully low percentage of women filling them – what is different about these Awards is the idea of encouraging women to actually start their own businesses.”
You can enter at [ilink url=”http://techpreneurs.co.uk”]techpreneurs.co.uk[/ilink] and the deadline for entries is 10th May, and an awards ceremony and dinner will be held on 26th June.
