Disruptive innovations are the main drivers of economic prosperity and societal changes. They change the way society and enterprises do things, the way we communicate, consume, work, and spend our free time to a fundamental degree. Even new species like smartphone zombies are born.

Female Ventures Eindhoven was happy and proud to bring back their events post-lock-down with the topic of Eindhoven as a location for innovation and startup ecosystem. What are the chances and opportunities, but also the challenges and bottlenecks for the greater region to take a stronger position among the European startup ecosystems and become future-proof?

By nature, startups lack resources and therefore investments become true enablers for growth. Recently, a number of Dutch venture capitalists announced they will intensify efforts in driving diversity in their investment decisions of which the Borski Fund with their slogan “Borski Fund investing in companies that reduce the gender gap – Success has no gender” is one of the more prominent examples. While these initiatives are a significant step towards a positive development, the very basic settings need to be secured first. This includes an education system that facilitates creativity and out of the box thinking, healthy and dynamic support and ecosystem, stakeholders providing support to test and validate ideas, and progressive businesses that apply these in real markets.

Prof. Dr. ir. arch. Isabelle M.M.J. Reymen – Scientific Director TU/e Innovation Space

Isabelle Reymen is a Full Professor and Chairs Design of Innovation Ecosystems, in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing (ITEM) group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Furthermore, she is the Scientific Director of TU/e innovation Space, a community that facilitates and supports interdisciplinary challenge-based engineering education. She combines entrepreneurial thinking with a passion for design processes and aims for system innovation.

Mariëlle van Bijsterveld – Business Developer Softech at BOM

Mariëlle is a business developer at the Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM) which provides early-stage expertise and risk capital for startups and scaleups. She loves working with energetic, coachable people with a sense of humor who love the customer problem. She will share views from an investor’s perspective.

Betsy Lindsey – Chief Financial Officer and Co-founder at Aircision, and former Managing Director of Investor Relations at HighTechXL.
Betsy Lindsey is a startup veteran, who is currently CFO and co-founder of a groundbreaking startup Aircision, which developed a new type of solution that can reinvent the use of laser technology. Moreover, Betsy has previously served as a Managing Director of Investor Relations at a well-known startup venture builder HighTechXL.

Iris Soute – Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at Picoo

Iris is on a mission to motivate children to play in a more active and social way. Her startup Picoo developed a product that is a first outdoor -play- computer and can be implemented at grammar schools, kindergartens, vacation parks, and at children parties.

This edition was made possible by Female Ventures.

 

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