The November meeting of Women in Telecoms & Technology (WiTT) celebrated women entrepreneurs in tech with a panel discussion among leading women who have founded, grown, sold, and promoted businesses in the tech sector. Our women entrepreneurs event was timed to take place immediately after Global Entrepreneurship Week, which ran from 18-24 November this year.
A video of the event is now available on the WiTT YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/8c6jZ497RMo
Audrey Mandela, WiTT Chair and co-founder of Multimap.com, chaired the panel. Our speakers included:
- Emma Sinclair MBE, Co-Founder, EnterpriseAlumni;
- Joanne Smith, Founder, TCC and RecordSure; and
- Felicia Meyerowitz Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Akoni.
Our panel will discussed their views and experiences, including:
• panelists’ own challenges in starting and growing (and in some cases selling) their businesses;
• best and worst decisions made while building their businesses;
• whether panelists believe there are differences between male and female entrepreneurs, the types of businesses they start, their management styles, and their experiences raising capital;
• views on scaling up businesses started in the UK; and
• advice for other women entrepreneurs.
Some of the key lessons from our entrepreneurs:
- Develop and use your network. Find people who want to see you do well and want you to succeed.
- Focus on team and cashflow as your business grows.
- Hire slowly and carefully but don’t develop an efficient system for dealing with problematic team members.
- The sector needs more female investors as well as female entrepreneurs
- Although it can take a lot of time and effort, you need to understand all of the legal documents related to the creation of your business and fund-raising (Articles of Association; Shareholders’ Agreements). Pay particular attention when you are raising cash and be careful about loss of control.
- Raising funds is like a marriage — there has to be give and take on both sides and the partnership must be a respectful one.
- Don’t hesitate to ask for advice. Good advisers whom you can trust may cost you money but this should be money well spent.
- Learn to negotiate. Joanne recommended reading “Getting to Yes”.
We would like to give our sincerest thanks to Bird & Bird for hosting this event.
Speaker bios
Panel Chair
Audrey Mandela
Co-Founder, Multimap; Chair, WiTT
Audrey Mandela is chair of Women in Telecoms & Technology (WiTT), a networking group for women in the sector. She also runs Mandela Associates, which provides consulting services for clients in the telecom, internet and geographical sectors.
Audrey was Co-Founder of Multimap, one of the world’s leading online mapping providers, where she acted as the company’s corporate counsel and marketing director, and was a board director. Multimap was acquired by Microsoft in December 2007.
Audrey was formerly Senior Vice President, International, for the Yankee Group, one of the industry’s leading IT research firms. As Senior VP, Audrey was responsible for managing the Yankee Group’s research, consulting and sales activities in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Audrey is a board director for Wedu, a charity that mentors and supports young women leaders from underserved communities; a member of the advisory board of Angel Academe, an angel network that focuses on investments in women-led businesses; and president of the Wellesley alumnae Club in the UK. She is also an NED and advisor for several start-ups.
Speakers
Felicia Meyerowitz Singh
Co-founder and CEO, Akoni
Felicia conceived of Akoni as a frustrated saver both individually and as a business director, holding £50m cash, with very few market options. Akoni is an award-winning cash marketplace platform; it leverages the market trend of convergence of both Open data and technology with full cash and savings solutions as the future driving solutions on a white label basis – marketplaces existing within trusted marketplaces. Akoni provides a white label B2B2x Cash/deposit marketplace to the wealth sector. The compamy has won a number of Innovation accolades and awards.
Felicia is a promoter of diversity and inclusion, particularly in entrepreneurship, and founded Hive Founders to support under-represented entrepreneurs as well as being on the TEDxEuston Africa focused Foundation Board. She was named Everywoman in Technology overall winner in 2019.
Felicia has significant experience in high-growth regulated Financial Services, working with businesses and startups including Alexander Forbes, Media Services, Primary Group & Howden, and has launched a number of digital market solutions. Felicia is a Chartered Accountant (SA) with EMBA from London Business School (cum laude).
Emma Sinclair MBE
Co-Founder, EnterpriseAlumni
Emma is the youngest person to have floated a company, doing so at 29 on the London Stock Exchange. A serial entrepreneur, she now co-leads global software company EnterpriseAlumni. Their software powers the corporate alumni networks of some of the world’s largest companies.
Outside of her day job, she contributes to media and is UNICEF’s First Business Mentor. In 2016, was awarded an MBE by the Queen for Services to Entrepreneurship.
Joanne Smith
Founder, Recordsure and TCC
When Joanne brought the Recordsure concept to life in 2012, it marked the culmination of a 20-year career at the pinnacle of financial services. Her passionate expertise in industry-wide compliance matters is rooted in her time at leading industry names including HBOS, KPMG and the FSA.
Joanne is also the founder of TCC, leading provider of compliance solutions. She holds an MBA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausées in Paris. She was named Women in Compliance Awards’ Inspirational Woman of the Year (2014), included in Innovate Finance’s Women in FinTech Powerlist (2018) and awarded the FDM everywoman Entrepreneur of the Year award (2018).
Having previously focused on UK regulatory compliance Joanne has, over the last 12 months, moved to the international arena. Working with KPMG in Australia, Recordsure’s advanced AI is now working with the financial services industry post-Royal Commission to help right the wrongs of the past and deliver better customer outcomes for the future.
In the last 18 months Recordsure has been listed on the European Business Awards Innovation Award ‘One to Watch’, Fintech Power 50, Fintech 100 and Regtech 100.