The W Founder Award
Starting a company is one of the most challenging journeys one can undertake in the business world.
In BCG's recent research study it was found that for every dollar of funding, women co-founded startups generated 78 cents, while male-founded startups generated less than half that — 31 cents. However, when women business owners pitch their ideas in the early stages of fundraising they receive on average more than $1 million less than men.
In 2017, just 2% of VC funding went to all-women teams, and only 12% to those of mixed-gender, as reported by Pitchbook.
According to the latest gender equality report published by WEF, the gender gap in the AI workforce is three times larger than the average.
The numbers are bleak -- they can and will be changed.
This is why we created the W founder award. We want to celebrate the achievements of women co-founded companies in the data science, machine learning and AI space worldwide -- their founders and their teams.
We'd love to hear more about your journey, goals and anecdotes along the way -- whether you're just starting out and opened up a cloud account yesterday or you have already raised some money and opened up an office.
What does the W founder award contain?
$2,000
$20,000 of Google Cloud credits
Ticket to the WIDS Zurich 2019 conference and paid travel expenses
We aim to give out up to 3 W founder awards. We're so excited to receive your applications!
To apply, just fill out an application form available here. If you have any questions, please reach out to us on founderaward@wids.ch
The applications for 2019 are closed.
W Founder Award winner 2019
Daria Minsky is the founder of leading Belarusian lifestyle magazines (kyky.org, the-village.me) and “Reformation”, a media project on political and social reforms. In 2018 she co-founded an AI media startup exponenta.io.
Exponenta is meant to bring a data-driven approach to content creation. The team of data engineers and machine learning experts works on decoding the complexity of virality and providing actionable insights for content creators.