Financing to women, an opportunity to boost future unicorn companies

As a consequence of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, in the last year the forms of consumption have changed substantially and technology startups have been strongly favored and promoted. In Argentina, five firms achieved in the last four months a financial valuation of more than 1,000 million dollars and came to be considered "unicorns".

In this way, today there are 11 national unicorns among which are firms such as Mercado Libre, TiendaNube, Despegar and Ualá. Of the Argentine companies that fall into this category, all were founded by men. To build a diverse economy and break down the glass ceiling, it is essential to provide women with access to financing opportunities, how to achieve it?

In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic scenario, the Argentine entrepreneur Silvina Moschini became the first woman in Latin America to achieve that her startup, TransparentBusiness –a New York-based company dedicated to providing solutions for remote work- reached the unicorn category. She is now also the executive producer of Unicorn Hunters, an American reality show that looks for the next unicorns and through which she is committed to sharing her vision of business.

The businesswoman defines herself as “passionate about entrepreneurship, technology and innovation with social impact”. In addition to developing TransparentBusiness, she founded SheWorks!, a platform that uses technology to close the gender gap and provides cloud employment opportunities for Latin American women.

In a dialogue with BAE Negocios, Moschini told how women can boost their ventures and how to finance companies through crowdfunding.

What is crowdfunding

“Crowdfunding refers to platforms that connect entrepreneurs with individual investors, allowing people anywhere in the world to offer money to individuals or startups,” Moschini explained.

This is a collective financing network, which through economic donations manages to finance a project in exchange for rewards or shares in the firm. Usually, this process is done online.

The founder of TransparentBusiness and SheWorks! introduced the concept of equity crowdfunding, a form of investment “in which, in exchange for relatively small amounts of money, public investors obtain a proportional part of the capital of the company”.

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In this line, Moschini assured that there is "a large gender gap" in terms of opportunities to access capital, which is why she considers that this solution is "beneficial for women entrepreneurs to obtain financing."

In 2020, a Crunchbase study found that only 2.3% of VC funding went to women-led companies, despite these projects generating 10% more cumulative revenue over a period of five years. In addition, Moschini specified that "only about 12% of decision makers in venture capital firms are women" and that 65% of companies do not have female firms.

“To face these statistics and be able to expand financing options to women and minorities, I decided to lead Unicorn Hunters,” said the businesswoman.

In Unicorn Hunters, Moschini seeks to share his vision of business and democratize access to capital. Also participating in the show are Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and former United States Treasurer Rosie Rios.

Tearing down the glass ceiling, the challenge for women entrepreneurs

To break down the glass ceiling in the world of startups, first of all, the businesswoman highlighted that Women entrepreneurs must be understood as a key element for the social and economic development of countries, even more so in a context of economic recession due to the health crisis.

“In recent years, entrepreneurship and innovation have been booming and this has the enormous power to transform the industry and economy of countries, which marks a very positive indicator. Without a doubt, startups are key to the economic development of Latin America,” he said.

According to a report by Tecnolatinas, in the region there are already 1,005 technology companies that raised more than 1 million dollars. Of these companies, 28 have a value of more than 1,000 million dollars, that is, they fall into the category of "unicorns" and have approximately 245,000 employees in total.

Moschini considered that the main challenge for women who want to boost their ventures is to "tear down the glass ceilings and overcome that limit that we often impose on ourselves."

In addition, he called for defeating the “impostor syndrome”, which he defined as “a voice that tells you that you got to where you are by pure chance and that you are not capable of fulfilling your professional dreams”.

In this vein, through her company SheWorks!, she launched the Skirt the Rules initiative, a global movement that encourages female entrepreneurs with training, workshops, and mentoring spaces to “confront the impostor syndrome, think big and out from the box".