Women Ambassadors
On Monday, fresh from a relaxing weekend in St Andrew's (where it rained a lot), I participated in a panel discussion along with Margaret Hodge, Minister of State for Industry and the Regions, at the launch of the Women's Enterprise Ambassador's Network.
The recruitment of 1,000+ to this network is so they serve as role models for the next generation of entrepreneurs and inspire more girls and women to choose a career in business. Obviously, our hope is to encourage more to choose a career in IT also - and to use technology as the basis for their innovations. We could do with more girl geeks. I met Sarah Blow at the event who runs London Girl Geek dinners. Marvellous.
Interestingly, the GEM report highlighted that women are twice as likely to launch a new business venture based on new technology (that wasn't available a year prior). However, women start-ups still face some challenges - such as the perceived barrier to access to finance - so it's important that the banks can help provide education and attract more women to use their services to fund their ideas. Claire Logie from Royal Bank of Scotland was also on the panel.
The other key pillar of the Taskforce is to simplify the Business Support Services - i.e. make it easy for entrepreneurs and owners of small, young businesses to access the right level of Government support. There is a lot out there but often people don't know what is available to them. The Small Firms Loan Guarantee offer for instance was news to me. So, lots to do. The guys at the SBS at the DTI are busy working on this as we speak.
I met Jackie Waring during my visit to the MS Edinburgh office last Thursday to talk about her idea for a web-based lending solution - where UK women provide an investment pot for women entrepreneurs in developing countries. One to explore a bit further perhaps and connect with the Trestle Foundation.
One final bit of goods news (I think so anyway)....is that there will be more women millionaires in the UK by 2020 than men. And before you ask, no, that's not as a result of generous divorce settlements!!!! We certainly could do with more women business angels investing in the next generation of women Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. And God knows, you always need more shoes....
