Small Business Research and Enterprise

By: Parul, Athena FundX

Sandy is dropping kids off to school and while carrying her work bag, kids’ snack boxes, and activity kits, she feels like her back is going to give in. She thinks to herself, if only there was an app that would alert her when the load in her purse was disproportionate. Maybe she could develop one, but where would she find extra hours in her day to even start. Suddenly, the simple idea seems insurmountable. 

Zeinab feels like women in her community could benefit from speaking to a therapist who understands their cultural, religious and socio economic context. However, she finds it hard to discuss the idea with her family or friends and wishes that she could ask questions to a confidante who’ll guide her through the steps to test out her idea. 

Rachel is a lawyer who often puts in long hours and has struggled to find a nutrition plan that works with her schedule. She wants to come up with a tech solution that can give her nutrition advice as she goes through the day. She has spent countless hours searching for developers with quotes ranging from a few hundred pounds to thousands and got so confused, she dropped the idea entirely. 

What do all these have in common?

Tech business ideas borne out of personal or community need with a potential to have a significant positive impact. However, all of these ideas ended up in an idea graveyard before any tangible analysis or exploration due to the typical barriers women face in tech entrepreneurship: paucity of time and confidence, limited access to tools, resources, information, and funds, as well as a lack of a safe space to try and fail.

Why do we need to solve this?

Research underscores the immense potential of women-led businesses to drive social, economic, and environmental progress, while providing better returns on investment. For instance, the Rose Review estimated that achieving gender parity in scaling and advancing entrepreneurship could add £250 billion to the UK economy. However, the Gender Index 2023 data suggested that there were 714,000 active female-led companies in England compared to 2.47m male-led companies. This means that female-led businesses comprise only 17.4% of all active companies and this number is even lower for tech businesses. It partly boils down to social, economic, psychological, network, and access barriers that lead to fewer women setting up and growing tech businesses, compared to men.

How can we solve this?

To address this disparity, concerted efforts are underway to support and promote women in the tech ecosystem. However, these don’t fully solve the problem. Even with access to resources and programmes meant to accelerate women on their tech entrepreneurial journey, female founders are still less likely to apply to accelerator programs than all-men teams and less likely to get funded through equity funding than their male counterparts. In certain scenarios, some of the programmes even seem to widen the gender gap. Tackling the systemic and socio-economic barriers will require long term and holistic changes across the ecosystem. Fortunately, practical solutions, resources and strategies are available to aspiring female tech entrepreneurs to break through some of these barriers. 

If you are an aspiring female tech entrepreneur, solutions like Athena FundX’s AI enabled Athena coach enables you to learn step by step about the tech entrepreneurship journey, get access to practical tools and tips from existing entrepreneurs as well as have a safe space to ask questions in any language without fear of judgement. It’s free to use and leverages micro learning modules for time poor women to access learning anytime, anywhere. The WhatsApp based coach means no new app download, no additional steps for registration and fewer barriers to get started on your tech entrepreneurship journey.

Entrepreneurs can use free versions of prototype tools like FIGMA or Fluid UI to come up with a UX (user interface) to visualise what the product could look like and get feedback from potential customers. You can also leverage generative AI solution tools for content (ChatGPT) or code development (github), no code low code solutions to develop chatbots, or apps (Bubble.oi) with little or no knowledge of coding. 

Getting to a working prototype or product in a quick, agile and cost effective manner can often be the make or break point for going ahead with a potential tech idea. The key take-away here is that you don’t need to have a tech background, know how to code, or hire an expensive developer to start a tech business. 

Additionally, tech businesses have specific challenges which can be tackled by implementing these strategies from the start:

1. Establish a clear business model: Define ‘Who is going to pay for the product or service’ early on as it is one of the most important decisions about your tech product or service. In cases where the direct users are not the buyers, the value proposition and targeting needs to reflect this. For example, if you are developing an edtech solution, the students are your users so your product development needs to focus on that, but the messaging and marketing needs to be geared towards schools/ parents who are the buyers for your product.
2. Plan your funding roadmap in parallel with the product roadmap: While bootstrapping in the initial stages is possible and encouraged to keep control of your equity; tech development iterations and acquiring customers tend to be time consuming and expensive processes. Hence, understanding the financing options early is the best way to survive and grow the business. Whether looking for grants, loans, venture capitalists (VCs) or angel investments, you should always aim to align the financial investment with the vision of how you want to scale and grow. Business loans, VCs and investing communities which have a remit or clear focus on funding female-led businesses should definitely be on your target list.
3. Build and leverage your community: Entrepreneurship and tech entrepreneurship no less, can be a solitary and tough journey. Hence, seeking out a tribe or community that understands the challenges and also provides guidance in navigating them is absolutely crucial. Athena circles enables entrepreneurs to access a network of fellow female entrepreneurs to continue the engagement and discussions and find supporting networks and solutions. Our recent International Women’s Day showcase and awards celebrated innovative female founders and the entire start-up community, with participation from entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, organisations like London & Partners and City of London Corporation’s SBREC, as well as councils. Leveraging the community was one of the key takeaways for success in tech entrepreneurship from the event. 

Conclusion

Setting up a tech business may seem daunting but you can overcome barriers with the right resources and support. While it does help, you do not need to be a developer or know coding to have a tech business and you can develop and test out your business idea at little or no cost. Don’t forget to ask for help and most importantly believe that you can!

Learn more about Athena FundX

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*We strive to do our best when supporting small business and their growth. Our business databases can give you information and data that can help you with advertising, market research, company information, and industry factsheets. If you have already taken the plunge, we would love for you to join us at a seminar, our workshops cover digital marketing, business model canvas and planning, demystifying taxes and intellectual property to name a few. Visit our events page or website for more information.