 I'm Helena Cabetta, partner at Score Three Angels, an angel investment network investing in women and other underrepresented entrepreneurs. Thank you for joining us today. I'll be your moderator for today's global innovation through science and technology, or just Tech Connect, a conversation on investing in women. Women investors are leading the charge in increasing access to capital, resources and networks for women entrepreneurs. This gender lens investing model is empowering women and proving that women led startups are just as capable of success as their male counterparts. Remember, you can join the conversation by sending us your question and comments to the chat space next to the video player or through Twitter, hashtag just tech connect. And if you're hosting a viewing group, be sure to send us your question and a live photo of your group for a chance to be featured during our program using hashtag just tech connect. Now, let me begin by welcoming our panel of experts. I'm joined here today by Gwen C. Edwards, an experienced angel investor and the co-chair for Angel Resource Institute, a leader in early stage investing education. I'm also joined by Elisa Freya, the founder of Wimina, a platform supporting the Middle East, North Africa entrepreneurial ecosystem by empowering and educating women investors and entrepreneurs alike. And joining us in the chat space to help answer your questions and share links to resources is Christina Tamer, a senior program officer at venture well managing entrepreneur training programs. Thank you all for joining us today. As we wait for viewers to send us their questions, I would like to go ahead and kick off the discussion by explaining what gender lens investing means to each of us and what the significance is to each of us. And I'll go ahead and kick it off. To me, gender lens investing is the intentional integration of gender analysis and our investment thesis. And this can mean different things to different investors. To some, it's increasing access to capital for women, whether it's through micro financing or venture capital investing in women tech founders or increasing access to capital to women hedge fund managers. And to others, it's looking at the entire value chain of the company and assessing their board of directors, their founding team and their senior management team and seeing how women are valued equally as men. And the others are looking at products and services of the company and saying, is their product and or services solving challenges for women in the marketplace? This can be, for example, an innovative AI product that is integrating character traits of women and minorities or other groups that are typically not factored into developing the software and making sure that AI is inclusive in medicine and other areas. And to answer the original question, so the significance of this to us is the ability to unlock potentials in a great part of the world where that's typically overlooked and increasing lucrative opportunities to investors to invest in. So basically looking to uncover ideas that are typically overlooked and really providing investors a great return for their money. Gwen, how about you? Hi, yeah. Well, I love the topic. I think I've been focused on gender and the impact that we have in the working world and then in the entrepreneurial world for a long time. And about 12 years ago, I started getting really intensely involved through a couple of different organizations, but mostly recognizing that, believe it or not, even right in Silicon Valley, women have a difficult time getting access to capital. So we know that it's really problematic on a global basis. And our focus and my focus has really been on enabling women to get access to capital, helping them find those resources, working with them, investing in them, mostly through Golden Seeds. And in so doing, the whole point of our effort is really to prove that women are great bets, that women can be terrific leaders and provide excellent returns to investors. So it's been really focusing on the lens is how do we find companies where there's at least one woman with at least a significant equity position, 10% or more would be nice, where they're a founder or a CEO or a C level executive. So that's the lens when we go hunting for companies. And thankfully, we're finding more and more and they're really great opportunities. Yeah, absolutely. Elisa, can you share your thoughts with us? Yeah, definitely. At least for us, the gender lens started out as being more of happenstance. We set out to empower women to be investors, knowing that they would naturally have less of a subconscious bias, and probably be investing in more female led startups than all male venture capital firms or all male angel groups. That proved to be right. So after three years with our angel network, we actually had 40% of our portfolio that has at least one female founder and 50% of all the companies that actually pitched to the network had one female founder. That wasn't by design. That was simply choosing the best deals, but having women be on the other side of the table. That was our initial way of approaching gender lens investment by just empowering the female investor. And now we've taken a bit more of a direct approach, because we saw that even though we were able to prove our theory, the region that we are in still was not incorporating women on the investing side. And so we wanted to fix the pipeline, and we focused on identifying, as Gwen said, identifying companies that have at least one female founder who holds a significant enough equity stake and feeding them into the accelerator, incubator, and angel investment pipeline. Absolutely. So similarly as score three, we're tackling both side of the coin as well, the entrepreneurial side increasing women entrepreneurs investing in them. And then on the investment side, working to increase the number of checkwriters. So because it's well known and backed by data that investors tend to invest in people that are similar to them, unfortunately. So that's absolutely true. Thank you, ladies for your input. Still ahead, we'll dive into the results of the poll questions that our viewers responded to. But first, let's ask our panel of experts to share how they each approach gender lens investing and the opportunities and challenges they face in this space. Gwen, I'm going to start with you. Well, it's really a lot of it is in our process of how we reach out to companies and then the diligence process. So we look for social impact, but we're also, I would say more kind of venture like we look for companies that are going to provide great returns and that we can showcase and hold up to the world. And so in a way, when I answered the earlier question, I think our lens really is looking for those talented superstars, and they're increasingly all around us. So we're finding also that when we look for companies with a blend of ethnicity and gender, we get really rich teams. And there's some very good data that shows that when you blend people from different cultures and backgrounds, as well as gender, you really start to have improved decision making and results. And we see it in data on boards and how boards perform. And we're assuming that that's going to translate also to smaller teams. So, you know, we're pretty focused on what we're looking for initially, and we're across domains. So it can be software, it can be med tech, again, just wherever we find the really talented women. And then when we don't, I mean, often we still have people apply and come to pitch. And we explain that we're really looking for that diversity on the team. And sometimes that company has a person that they're just about to hire. And we could give them a little nudge. So that's, you know, we want that to be the best talent for the company, obviously, the investment. But it's interesting to see how things are being affected and impacted by the awareness and just the positive reactions that people are starting to have to some of these women-led companies. Yeah. I share, I second that. So, you know, we hear a lot in some spaces that there's a pipeline issue, maybe especially in technology, that there simply are not enough talented women or minorities out there starting great businesses. And we found that to the contrary. Once we started our angel group, people were actually actively reaching out to us. And we had a pipeline of great, great investors and unique ideas. And so it's been a very exciting process to uncover so much potential. Elisa, how do you approach investing in women in the MENA region? And what are some of the opportunities and challenges that you face with MENA? Well, I think to add to what you were saying, one of the main challenges in the region for investing in women is primarily a deal sourcing issue. So initially, I was working with all the VCs and all the VCs had mostly male partners when we started. There were only two female venture capitalists back in 2013. And now there's eight. So we're very excited about that growth. But it really took us to talk to the VCs and challenge them on their sourcing channels. How are you finding the companies that you end up investing in? Because you have 20 companies in your portfolio and there isn't a single female involved on any of the founding teams. And we would call them out. We use the same channels. But because we, first of all, because we were a female focused brand, we did seem to be a little bit more approachable to female lead teams. So I think that helped us a lot in deal sourcing and identifying, first of all, the companies that had potential to be invested in. The second thing was that we actually went out of our way, put more effort into making sure that we had an equal playing field. So we wanted to find female lead startups and we saw that conventional channels weren't really attracting them. So we went out of our way to join Facebook groups, create community events, speak, do a lot of PR and a lot of thought leadership through conventional media just to get our name out there and really reach out to a female community that we knew existed, but nobody was able to tap into. So that was the first real challenge that we were able to identify and that we've overcome now. I mean, just to give you an idea, we recently launched an accelerator called Momentum. That's just for Middle Eastern based female tech startups. And we got 175 applications for a first time accelerator that all had female lead teams. And this was something that was totally unexpected from us and unheard of in the region in terms of just applications from female lead startups. And we really do credit that to alternative channels for deal sourcing and a female friendly brand. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. Congratulations, by the way, on your launch. That's much needed. And what's interesting, like you said, is the social capital is some of the barrier to financial capital at times. So making sure that people don't necessarily need warm introduction to access money. So the conventional way of reaching out to angel investors or VCs is you certainly need a warm introduction. You have to have somebody in the know to clue you in. So what we're doing at score three is, again, making it more democratic and saying retake call calls. You can apply and we will give you the same fairness in reviewing your application and assessing your business. So I think that's really, really key. I agree with you, Alisa. Now, thank you. We're going to now dig into the poll questions that came in. We took poll questions, I believe yesterday and this morning. And we asked, what aspects of gender lens investing most excites you? You can see the results on the screen. The top answers was increasing access to capital for women at 31%, followed by expanding entrepreneurial opportunities for women at 28%, then empowering women in the workforce at 25%. Gwen and Alisa, what are your reactions to the poll? Alisa, let's start with you. Yeah, I mean, it's not really surprising. The question is really what excites you in gender lens investing. So I mean, just in that, it's very self, it's expected that people will be wanting to empower women through that type of investment, through creating a more equal world. They are getting excited and that makes it a far more enjoyable investment strategy and investment experience for them. Yeah, absolutely. And the other piece is that empowering of the next generation of women and our sons and daughters equally to have a role model to look up to. I think that's a huge piece of it as well. Let's go ahead and take some questions from our online viewers. Okay, so one of the questions we got is, what trends in gender lens investing are you seeing in emerging markets? I'm going to go back to you, Alisa, on this. Definitely. So a lot can be said about emerging markets. And to start off with, we do not have the luxury, at least in the Middle East, of one singular large market. We have to co-invest across borders, investors and entrepreneurs alike, and we have to expand across borders in order to grow and have a significant financial return in what we're doing. So because we don't really have that luxury, hunting for deals is still very difficult. So I guess we also don't have such a saturated market. We have some entrepreneurs in Jordan, some entrepreneurs in Egypt, some entrepreneurs in Saudi, some in UAE, and we really have to hunt it down. So our priority is to get the best deal as investors. And the subconscious biases do come into play, but the priority is still to make an investment. So I guess we don't have the luxury to be as picky as they do in more developed markets. So gender lens investing, it's still something that's to be discussed, but what we're noticing is actually percentage of entrepreneurs funded that are female are still in the minority, but they're actually a little bit higher than in the US when it comes to some early stages. And I think that that's something that our region should be very proud of, even though the markets are not as good and the numbers aren't as exciting and we don't have as many entrepreneurs. Percentage-wise, more women get funded because we just, we can't find any, we don't have the luxury to be sexist. And the next question just came through as well. What are noticeable differences you've seen for women led versus men led startups? Gwen, I'll defer that to you. Okay. By the way, I want to tell at least that I spent, I did a workshop for 10 days in Jordan. And this was about almost three years ago now, two and a half years ago. So I have a taste of the region and the challenges and excitement. And it was all focused on women. So it was really fabulous. And we took 10 women from the United States with 10 women in Jordan and did a 10 day program. So it's so exciting to hear from you about the increase activity and it's really fantastic. So we're planning and planning offline. And I wanted to just, to comment on the question around how are women led companies different? It's very interesting. At one level, there's a lot of similarities, but a couple of things that we've noticed. I think women, we've seen, they tend to be very, maybe a little more cautious with money. So they're careful with how they use it. And that's a real plus. I think that's one reason why we're starting to see that women can have better returns than men when they run companies and when three of our women are on boards, the statistics improve on the outcomes for those companies. But at the entrepreneurial level, we see that they're cautious and sometimes they don't ask for as much money as they really need. So it's a mixed bag. It's something we're aware of and we try to coach women to be a little more aggressive about what they ask for. At the same time, we love the fact that there's a real sensitivity to the fact that capital is precious and how you use it is really, really important. And I think women tend to, again, this is just a tendency, want to build a business that really has impact, even if it's not a social impact company, but they want to build a business for the long term, maybe 10 years, maybe more, maybe 15. They're thinking longer term and there's still a tendency, I think, for men to want to build a company because it's all about the money and then they want to have an exit in three years or five years max and then do it again. So there's this desire to be a serial entrepreneur and really, again, get an accomplishment again and again and again. So we're finding it's interesting that no one is going to turn down a great exit opportunity, male or female, but I think the interest level is sometimes higher amongst women to build that longer term business. So it's just an interesting point. And then women often are trying to think about how to integrate other factors and they're, I think, aware of what the impact is in the community in which they work. I think they actually make terrific leaders we're finding in terms of team building and focus. But I think the differences are around capital and how they perceive it. And so we're really mindful of that because we want people to have enough money and not get to the point where they're vulnerable to the next round of capital. And it's always really good to be able to establish the terms and have as much influence and power in the negotiation as you can. So to be in a strong position. And then the other thing where we're looking at the difference is upon exit. Again, we want women to be stronger advocates for themselves, for their company, for its value. And again, that's something we're working through the whole value chain right now from exception to exit. Yeah. And what's interesting is with these, you mentioned, Gwen, that women tend to focus on long term business goals and value impact. And I think that's huge because, especially in this day of age of instant gratification, it's big problems. Do you need time to be invested in and take time, 20, 30 years? So my question back to you is, Gwen, do investors have an appetite to these long term goals and big problems that some women founders and others are trying to solve? So that's an excellent question. And it leads to some new thinking around different ways to invest into structure investment. So I think the answer to that question is very dependent on the investor, the individual. Many investors are looking for that shorter term horizon and will just not want to get involved in a longer term opportunity because they want to get their money out. They need to put it back to work. So one of the things that I and others have been working on, and this is kind of independent of golden seeds as a group, but something I've been working on and we kind of help people around the world to see these opportunities is to make a distinction between the return that you have as an investor or your exit is the term everybody uses. Distinguish between the investor's exit and the entrepreneur's exit or the company's exit. Today the standard thinking is that they're integrated, that the investor doesn't get their money out until there's a quote liquidity event, i.e. the company gets sold. But there's the new thinking that says, you know, you can separate those two. And that comes from thinking about how can a deal and investment be structured so that the investor gets their money out plus a reasonable return in maybe three years. Maybe it's four years, but it's structured as a percentage of revenue. The company is going to have fast revenue growth. That can be the way it's returned. It can be structured as a dividend. It can be a loan with interest, but much lower than you'd think of as a loan, a revenue-based loan. There are companies that are doing this and structures. So it's, and again, you know, I would say that this thinking around alternative ways for investors to get returns came out of the social impact space where typically someone's building a business and they never want to sell it to a traditional corporation. They want to break the paradigm. So social impact investors had to figure out, well, how do I do this? I want to do good. I want to make the difference, but I still want to get money back plus a return. And so we're starting to learn from some of that thinking, as well as the fact that today more than ever, it's very cost-effective to start a company. So especially if it's a software company and you have a software, it's a service model and you're generating revenue. So in that case, you'll see margins and revenue growth opportunities. So it might pay to not just think about selling equity to an investor in your company for the long haul, which is expensive, but think about, well, when I get that great revenue uptick as a CEO, I could start returning money to that investor. And some investors would be very happy to have two times their money in four years and be thrilled. They don't need 10X or 20, or they don't need a unicorn. They would love to have those opportunities to consistently see a nice return. So again, it's new thinking and it's, I think, extremely germane to women and women-led companies for all the reasons we were discussing. And aside from financial investments, what do women entrepreneurs need to succeed, build, and run their businesses? And what do organizations provide to them? And Gwen, I'll start with you and move on to Elisa. Okay. So one of the things we've found is, I'll call it just-in-time mentoring. I think men and women, but I think for women, they really, really appreciate having other women around to reach out to. They have men and need men as well, but I think there is a real affinity to knowing that you're a woman, you've been there, done that, or you understand, you've been in their shoes. And it's, I think, more than anything, and I've heard this from so many entrepreneurs, and it was the case when I was as well, you need a mentor, and it's multiple mentors, but a mentor that really believes in you, and you know they are focusing on your success, and they have faith in you and confidence, and then somebody that you can turn to, and it might be, you just need a quick answer at 11 o'clock at night, or you might need something longer, plan strategy session, and it could be, you know, you've got a term sheet from an investor, and you just need a trusted advisor to tell you, is this really good, or am I being misled? And so I think it's about, again, trusted mentors and a network, and meeting other entrepreneurs that you can share ideas with. So next up we have a short video presentation to show you. Women-led businesses are becoming a force for prosperity and innovation across the globe. Let's take a look. In the last 10 years, the number of women in the global workforce has increased by 250 million, and that trend is only rising. Compared to just a quarter century ago, more women and girls have access to higher education and capital, giving them greater opportunities to leverage their innovative ideas into businesses. Research finds that supporting female entrepreneurs boosts the country's markets by 12% GDP. In 2012, there was an estimated 126 million women starting new businesses, and another 98 million running established businesses throughout the world. In the U.S. alone, women are starting 1,200 businesses a day and employing nearly 8 million people, generating 1.4 trillion dollars in sales. Now that's a lot of cash. But what's more, these strong women are building a framework for young women and girls to enter the workforce with fewer obstacles in the future. But our work isn't done yet. Women in developed nations are half as likely to start businesses compared to men and even less likely in countries with fewer opportunities for female entrepreneurship. For success in this space, women need more female mentors, the same access to capital as men, and a change in perception that entrepreneurship is not only a masculine activity. And on top of the numbers, women are often caught between cultural expectations and the expectations of the workplace. Despite this, women entrepreneurs are breaking barriers, benefiting themselves, their families, and their home countries. The numbers are in. When women entrepreneurs are supported, economies grow. Just Tech Connect. Elisa, how do you see the investment landscape shifting as more women become successful both as investors and entrepreneurs? So from an emerging market standpoint and the Middle East specifically, the investment landscape has boomed in the last five years. I was very lucky to enter this industry or right around that time, right before this wave started happening. But just to give you an idea, the number of startups with at least one female founder that has actually received investment has doubled from 2013 to 2017. So we're seeing not only a growth, an exponential growth in investment activity, but we're seeing a really exciting growth in investment activity towards women-led startups. Gwen, what are your thoughts? Oh, it's definitely changing. We see, oh gosh, we see it changing. And then sometimes we think we see something that happened and we think, is it really 2018 or is it maybe 1960? Because some things just don't change. We see the unconscious bias still all the time. But on the landscape side, it's so dynamic. If you think back just in the last 10 years, there were maybe six organizations, even right here in the United States that supported women, and we're looking at boot camps and other initiatives. And now there are so many you can't even fill a PowerPoint chart. It's just there are tons of organizations now focusing on women and just discovering the opportunity. So I'd love to mention one other thing as a kind of a beautiful showcase and inspiration. But we also find in the landscape that there are problems that women want to solve that might not be as interesting to men. And one example that is a recent success is a company called EnVision, a little N, capital B-I-S-I-O-N. And the CEO is Sarbi Sarna. And she built this company over five years, almost barely five, to focus on women's health and in particular solving for ovarian cancer. And at first it was looking at fallopian tubes and she'd go and talk to male investors and even male scientists. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's a small market. How many women get ovarian cancer? Now it's a huge success, huge success. So this you can read about this company. They've had great press in the last month, but to start out as a young graduate from UC Berkeley with just a couple of years experience and sell a company to Boston Scientific for $275 million is phenomenal. So she was Forbes 30 under 30. Now she's all of 31 and had a baby along the way. So it didn't stop her lifestyle even. So it's just exciting to see situations like that. And I think the more they're showcased, everybody realizes, gee, there are opportunities we might have overlooked. Maybe we should take a deeper look at those. So again, things that serve women and women's health is another huge area that's very exciting. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the data itself is shocking in some ways, you know, less than, at least in the US, less than 1% of women are invested in by venture capitalists, which is a very tiny percentage. However, we do have role models and successful women founders that have exited that we can now look up to and hopefully build the next generation of women founders. So there's a lot of new development, a lot of new exciting developments that are happening in this space. So we're here for the ride. Thank you. Now let's get back to some questions from our online participants. A participant in viewing group at IGA Guatemala asks, what economic return on investment have you obtained from investing in women-led enterprises? Elisa, let me start with you. Yeah, definitely. So I love that question, first of all. We tend to focus on the economic benefits of investing in women because I feel like that's the best way to get the point across to men, to be honest, because it's very easy and fluffy to say like include women and so fantastic to invest in women. But specifically, when you're talking to a room of male investors, they communicate in numbers and so we do tend to move the conversation that way. What I think is the best return that I've received from investing in female founders is the ripple effect that it tends to have on the ecosystem as a whole. So in emerging markets, the ecosystems are quite small. We can see impacts of what we're doing quite quickly. So for example, within women's portfolio companies, we give them a lot of access to PR opportunities and we're quite outspoken. So what we've been able to do is we've been able to create like very inspiring role models from the women founders that are in this space. And it's not just that they become mentors, but the role models and the comfort that they've now gained in being outspoken has given the entire region an awareness of the fact that entrepreneurship can be done by women as well. As a career choice, it's something that is accepted now, encouraged in some places and very heavily promoted specifically in the UAE where we are based. Our female entrepreneurs are role models and we see, I mean, this is whether you want it to be economic or not, they tend to then hire in a much more diverse way. So you then see the most phenomenal mixture of people, whether that's diversity in age or culture or religion, sexual orientation and gender really represented in these companies, which creates, which is, I mean, that breed success at the end of the day, diversity is what yields the success. So we're seeing a lot of very interesting intangible cultural ripple effects that are happening just by investing in these women and investing our time and our resources, our know-how, our connections to get them, those articles to get them in front of those TVs, to get them comfortable with social media and we're telling their story. A lot of them are moms and we're mothers pre-start-up and during start-up and adding kids to the mix and that's okay. They're still able to fulfill those cultural obligations of a woman at home and also able to kick ass in the workplace. That's awesome. So our viewing group at the US Embassy in Djibouti asks, if access to investment finance for women is influenced by cultural factors, Gwen, do you want to take that, at least in the US and then Lisa can talk about the her Middle East experience? Oh, yes. Yeah, I would say absolutely and in a way being a woman is a culture and then you have other cultural attributes, you know, your ethnicity, your lifestyle, your culture, you know, outside of, well, your core culture and all of its values, absolutely influences. And I think the best, well, probably the best advice I could give on that front is trying to find investors, even if it's just one or a mentor that's just one that's most like you. And so you don't feel alone, regardless of, you know, as you define more specifically the cultural attributes that you're surrounded by and then try to go from that person to who else do they know. So it really is about finding, it's funny, we talk about the importance of diversity and yet I think when you're raising money, you want to find a core group of people most like you to help to get that initial spark going, to understand and relate to the fundamental business you're trying to build and then the context that surrounds you as you try to build that business and somebody that can just totally understand and relate. And that's why it's so exciting for us and why all of us here are so passionate about getting more women around the table because we know when somebody like you and initially we're talking just gender but gender and ethnicity as well when they're like you and you come into a room and present, the unconscious bias goes away. So I guess my biggest piece of advice would be to hunt for that person. I could tell some stories that just one quick one is an African American man here in the United States. I forget it's a country of origin in particular but he came through Sweden, he was here, he could not raise money, he kept going on, you know, out talking, talking, talking. Finally it was actually a Caucasian woman who took him aside and said, honey, let me tell you what it was like for me and she kind of said how she finally realized it wasn't her pitch. Her pitch was fine, she won all the pitch contests but why wasn't she getting money and finally she happened, just happened to end up at a conference where she was a panelist and all the panelists were women and the subject was women investing in women and she thought well I don't need this, I've been a successful executive woman, what is this women thing and all of a sudden she discovered after that meeting she started getting meetings with investors and her company is a really amazing software company that's now funded almost exclusively by women angels and women VCs and this is somebody that came out of Silicon Valley tech, worked at Oracle, worked at Salesforce, had connections but couldn't break that barrier and she's the one who told the African-American man that he needed to try hard to find somebody like him in the investment community to start breaking down the barriers otherwise he would spend another six months pitching to be told how to further perfect his pitch because that really wasn't the issue. Yeah no what's really interesting about that also is when we talk about culture in the United States it's very interesting to kind of break it down demographically but when we're in a region like the Middle East there's so many different cultures you know Jordanians have nothing to do with Saudi Saudi Arabian individuals and the Emirates are very different to the Lebanese and the Lebanese are very different to the Sudanese and just even the mapping of the Middle East really differs depending on who you're talking to but there's one really interesting element that I found that is underlying the culture of the region that has nothing to do with the demographics so actually for us one of the biggest cultural challenges that we've had to overcome or that we've been working on overcoming is the challenge of discussing money so in our culture it's very shameful to ask for money you work hard you are proud of what you do and you are generous we are very generous people across the region we love to host so the idea of asking for money which is a very important part of having a business is selling a product and asking for a certain price for that product tends to be very difficult for a lot of people to get over and then add to it the importance of being very clear about price points and valuations and investment amounts in investment discussions in the venture capital space that tends to be something that everybody shies away from but specifically women in the region so we do shy away from it as a culture because you know you can be seen as cheap if you want to negotiate an entrepreneur's valuation down and therefore you're bringing shame on your family by doing that or you can be seen as greedy by asking for too much for your company or asking for too much for your products as an entrepreneur and so that also kind of deters individuals from getting involved in it in the first place I'd rather just have my business and start slow and maybe sell something here and there not even at a price point that helps me break even but at a price point that I think is modest enough to not be judged and you know go on with my life but this entire venture capital space has come in and you know I guess shocked our region because now all of a sudden we're here talking about investing $50,000 or $20,000 into an early stage business and you know just getting over that judgment of the other person saying oh I have $20,000 you know I'll put in $20,000 like oh you have $20,000 to give who are you with your $20,000 who do you think you are when we're in a come you know we're an emerging market where there's people literally you know starving and some of our and some of the the parts of the region so that tends to be a very sensitive subject that affects the investment landscape as a whole and women being very sensitive to that have very sensitive to the home and bringing honor to their families tends you know tends to to affect them as well. Yeah no that's a very interesting commentary Alisa because the cultural nuances of money is very different across different countries and across different landscape and US in the US as well we have our share fare of nuances that we have to navigate so as when you're a global investor it would be interesting to see how you tackle these issues along with that one of our viewers from a group of viewers at the American corner in Winnok and Namibia asked how would you define social entrepreneurship and I will start with Gwen on that. So I probably have a broad definition of social entrepreneurship personally but well let me just I'll give you mine but I'll give you the kind of more common so I actually have a pretty broad perspective because I think that a company could start out and have a dream of being like Google and Google may not have ever thought they were a social impact company but they've had incredible impact on the world it's been an incredible enabler the same thing with Facebook you know even with the challenges they're facing and we're all facing around privacy huge social impact and so I think in a company like eBay huge social impact enabling people to make money but they're not considered social impact per se at all but I think so I like the broader definition because I love to think a little more broadly about an entrepreneur's idea and how might it have tremendous positive benefits in the world but I think typically a social impact investor would look for a company they really want to see an articulated impact to a social problem so they'll look at the financial returns that they can have um their expectations may or may not be as high as other investors and I say may or may not be because people are sometimes surprised that social impact investors are still looking to have a nice return on their money so it's not as though it's even slightly like philanthropy it's still investing but they're adding another layer to that lens so in addition to the financial return they want to see what is that social impact how many jobs will be created how many more people will be bad how many you know if it's an environmental uh come focused company how fewer gallons of petrol will be used um you know that the actual impact in a measured and form that can be tracked and sometimes social impact investors will say you know what are the milestones you want to achieve how can we together measure success because now it's not just revenue but there are other metrics so they'll really want to see what are those and then compare their investment in one social impact investment to another you know where is the best impact for the region for the world and how do they prioritize those investments so I still think it's an investment mentality but the returns are more than revenue and they're measured returns that was a good good overview Gwen how can we support women when it comes to risk management in their startups and businesses with one of our viewing groups in Lome Togo asks um Elisa you want to take that on sure um I think first of all it's a bit of a broad question because risk management in and of itself is I mean a very broad category but I the way that we look at coaching our entrepreneurs for risk management in general um first of all is to put them in a room with a lot of other entrepreneurs and we make them you know we do the conventional like business model canvas um and we get them very confident about the business that they're proposing to the people in front of them but we then start throwing you know um examples at them that have happened in the past um that are regionally specific so again I'm investing in companies in the Middle East and the Middle East is quite a volatile region um each market operates very differently uh we have democracies we have monarchies we have dictatorships and uh we have some that are rich with natural resources and some countries that do not have any natural resources so it's quite diverse and the risks are quite diverse so well and because the the region in the success of most companies is really heavily dependent on growth across uh different markets um we are able to kind of pull from historical data um and and throw examples at them so if we tell them okay um currently these are the costs that you're projecting but what happens if you know oil prices are slashed by 50 percent again next year um unpredictably and you know it turns out that what you're you know you're solving maybe something that's uh nice to have not a need to have so if you're solving an issue that's not really a big issue is is your product going to be considered a luxury and are you targeting the right consumer base to that that will stick with you and want your product despite the economic changes or what happens if you know the political situation changes or what happens if civil war breaks out and there's uh there's infrastructure damage so you don't have the same access to you know um very developed emails servers right and you don't have solid electricity to be able to code and build and develop your your product um i guess these are very different risks than you would look at if you were in the united states um but what we what we're able to to do is really take i guess the the the interesting developments that have happened in the past you know uh five years alone or eight years you know let's say since the air of spring and use those as examples now um and as and see what the entrepreneurs come up with what's amazing is that most of them uh end up you know mitigating that risk and coming up with phenomenal ways to circumvent that like it still blows my mind that we have some entrepreneurs who are able to build code in lebanon where there's eight power cuts a day uh you know or in egypt where there's a revolution happening outside um and you still have you know two jobs that you need to take to feed your family so there's some really really fantastic you know um resilience that we're seeing when it comes to to managing the risks in our region yeah um the resilience and the rigor that you know some of the women founders put in their company into their companies is phenomenal and uh one of our viewers in uh monrovo monrovia library asks do you know of any investment networks that specifically is focusing their efforts in african women entrepreneurs and i'll start with you alisa because you work in the region yeah so the middle east does include north african states um algeria morocco egypt tunisia um so technically we are an organization that focuses on african female entrepreneurs um but again for us it's a very select part of the african continent uh we work with our partners called vc for africa um they're a phenomenal resource that i urge you all to go to i think you can really just google it um and they have a list of all the different angel groups and venture capital funds um that focus on the african continent uh and deep descriptions of exactly what maybe sectors or if they're focusing um on a certain gender for example in their investment strategy thanks alisa we're almost out of time so short answer on this one is there any advice that hasn't already been discussed that you would give to women who want to build a successful business yeah i would say that first and foremost although you absolutely know you're a woman and you want to hold on to every ounce of that because it's terrific and you can be proud of the fact that you have a woman's brain and there's great scientific evidence now that shows that women have a more integrated brain than men i can even refer you to a good book on that um called the female brain and it's you'll be so proud after you read that but think about after you put that aside feel great i would focus on the business itself and think about is are you solving a real serious problem can you get traction even if your market is small what percentage of the potential buyers could you actually sell to and getting traction and then think about how quickly can you be what we call cash flow positive can you have enough cash coming in to cover your basic minimum needs because if you can do that and you're getting traction and you're solving a real problem you can resist you can prevent failure and then your challenge is how far and fast can you grow how successful can you be but you know that you'll have something and you can build from there and be in a really strong position so that would be my advice start with pride and confidence and know that you've got some biological advantages in addition to being a mother and partner and all the great things you can be thank you Gwen um it looks like we're actually out of time thank you for both for joining us here today and a special thanks to everyone viewing today particularly to the hosts of the viewing groups around the globe for mobilizing your entrepreneurial communities uh we had audiences at skewnia ben benjamin franklin in chihuahua mexico alianza cultural uruguay in montevideo uruguay us embassy in garamala city well widman american space in garamala city ij garamala cba in caracas venezuela us embassy in caracas venezuela us embassy in honduras us embassy in lima peru us embassy in san jose costa rica american center in moscow russia american corner in pristina kosovo american corner malora in albania us embassy in jerusalem israel us embassy in windrook namibia us embassy in lome togo american center in kigali rwanda us embassy in jibouti us youth network for reform in morovo morovia liberia idea in benin and el space in tunisia please continue to send in your questions the chat to the chat window and on twitter at hashtag just tech connect as our panelists will stick around for a few more minutes to answer all of your questions i hope you enjoyed our discussions today and thanks again for joining us goodbye