Our membership has always been wide-ranging in terms of professional background, including women from the corporate world along with entrepreneurs and independent professionals.

This presents a challenge in structuring our activities in such a way that we cover all of our members’ needs. When we began our mandate in 2011 the willingness to put a special focus on the specific needs of existing and potential entrepreneurs was an objective shared by the incoming PWA Board, given that our activities had traditionally been less concentrated in this area.

That is the reason why we have three specific events this fall targeting our entrepreneurs, be they budding or full-fledged:

• October 12 – our sold-out skill-building workshop on how to prepare your venture’s financial plan, held by financial management consultant and PWA Member Lynn Chasson
• November 16 – a second workshop aimed at developing your skills in making effective presentations once you have your business plan, run by partner-level consultant and PWA President Monica Pesce
• November 23 – our monthly speaker meeting focusing on the story of two decades of successful entrepreneurship in a changing world, featuring accomplished businesswoman and past President of EuropeanPWN Margaret Milan

 This is only the beginning. There are a number of new special programs and events to come in 2012!

Venture Capital: Gambling or Earning – Dream or Reality?

What is Venture Capital?

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, growing startup companies. In addition to angel investing and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets.

If it wasn’t for venture capital (and great entrepreneurial teams), the following companies would not exist: Google, Intel, eBay, Apple, Yahoo, Genentech, YOOX, Starbucks, Privalia, twitter, facebook.

Almost all the new great US companies are venture backed

Venture Capital in Italy

In Italy, the Venture Capital is still at an entry level. €115 M only have been invested. Italy comes long after other European countries such as France with €680 M or UK with € 1.28 B venture capital investments.

dPixel & Alessandro Santo

dPixel is a young company, which is looking for attractive ideas and business solutions for the web world. Alessandro Santo is one of the dPixel entrepreneurs and managers team members

Tips and Tricks to Get Funded

dPixel receives around 500 projects per year, meaning that it evaluates around 2 projects per day. Which are the selection criteria?

The written rules say that the “standard” documentation is needed including a convincing business plan and back up data, as well as a venture capital pitch. Because they are written rules, almost everybody provides these documents.

The unwritten rules (obviously more important and those making the difference) include passion for the business idea and its execution, strong commitment, a cohesive team, and a trusted and experienced advisory board. Furthermore, a deep study of the market size, and more specifically of the addressable market size is determinant. Last, but not least “the enemies”: do not estimate the competitors!

The essentials of trips and tricks can be summarized as “ideas worth nothing, it is all about execution”.

Women and Venture Capital: Just a Dream?

The reality says that less than 1% of the received projects are proposed by women. Among the causes, some hypothesis mention that women prefer safe jobs or women are less competitive than men and cannot sustain the hard life of a start up. Furthermore, in this case we talk about Web technologies, where the percentage of women is significantly less than men’s.

For example, making a quick survey in an IT department of one of the universities in Milan, the numbers say that assistant professor women are 10% of the total number of professors, associate professor women are 10% of the total number of professors, while full professor women are 4% of the total number of professors. The situation is better for the PhD students, where 20% are women. The truth is that in the IT domain there are significantly fewer women than men, but definitely more than 1%.

In the early ‘900 women didn’t even work outside their homes. Women got the vote right in 1946 in Italy, and now are actively involved in politics. Web technologies are quite young, so just give women several more years to concur also the Venture Capitals.

It is also worth mentioning that Mashape has looked for Italian Venture Capital with no success. So, it moved to Silicon Valley and the success arrived also in Italy. Instead of conclusions, we can say that also Venture Capital in Italy is young.

Find here the slides presented by Alessandro Santo during the event: “Venture Capital in Italy: An Insider’s View“ and “fail idee che affondano“.

Are you a freelance professional or are you considering the idea? Do you feel like you might need some tips on how to survive a freelance career? If you want to know how Axelle Brown-Videau, PR and PWA member, manages her freelance life and what she learned in 4 years of freelancing, check her post “Freelancing – quello che ho imparato durante 4 anni in 10 punti” (in Italian).

The new year welcomed in a new event, the start of a monthly Entrepreneurs’ Breakfast.The group, so far, is composed of five women, all with several years of experience as entrepreneurs or free-lancers. The meeting started with everyone presenting who they were, what they are doing, why they came and what their expectations were.

This was enough to start a lively creative brainstorming on the issues we were facing. For one attendee, we developed a strategy to transform her self-employment into a business that has growth potential, better branding and visibility while protecting her from copy-cat competition. As two of us were looking for new projects, we discussed several new business ideas and we may be starting something together soon. We also discussed the challenges of Italian clients who are not yet used to appreciating quality and professionalism.

In a nutshell, the breakfast resulted in a very creative, intense and productive morning. The group was homogeneous – as far as interests and experience were concerned – and it was extremely helpful and inspiring to hear about their experiences and realise how being an expatriate can be an advantage. All in all I can heartily recommend working in small groups and I hope that more PWA-members take the initiative to start their own groups.

Thank you to the PWA members that took part in the Entrepreneurs’ Breakfast and see you at the next one!

Barbara Niemann-Fadani