BNP Paribas, together with the Women’s Forum, inaugurates the “French Women Entrepreneurs 40”, which will distinguish 40 growing companies led by women. Update with Laure-Emmanuelle Filly.
While their numbers are growing slowly, female entrepreneurs still struggle, even when their model “works”, to get the funding that will allow them to scale up. Hence the urgency to change the situation.
Madame Figaro: What prompted BNP Paribas to launch this FWE40 list?
Lor-Emmanuel Fili. We keep talking about the next 40, these 40 French tech companies most likely to “scale” (achieve hyper-growth) and become unicorns, world-class leaders. None of them is led by a woman. That’s why, together with the Women’s Forum, we had the idea to create the “40 French Women Entrepreneurs” list, under the high auspices of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, to shed more light on creative women in companies. They will be divided into three categories: twenty founders of start-ups and very small enterprises (TPE), fifteen managers of SMEs (turnover between 10 and 50 million euros) and five women in company management. Intermediate-sized (ETI) (turnover over EUR 50 million). Selected candidates will benefit for one year from dedicated support offered by partners (BpiFrance, HEC, EcoVadis and Be A Boss).
Video to take your place in the office and have the keys to your career in hand
How to apply?
It is very simple. if you have founded or co-founded a company for more than 3 years, live in France and meet the growth criteria for your category, you can submit your application online until midnight on September 12th on our website *. The selection will look, of course, at the results of the company, but also at the management team and its complementarity, the degree of maturity of the project on ESG (environmental, social and governance) topics. The winners will be announced on November 29 at the Women’s Forum in Paris.
For women-led startups to become unicorns, they need to have more access to fundraising. Does this fight remain a war?
Unfortunately, yes. If we add to these companies the companies with mixed management, the whole is only 24% of fundraising in France, the size of which remains very low. That’s why, since 2019, we’ve made a commitment with BNP Paribas Development to allocate at least 10% of our new investments each year to projects founded or co-founded by women. Signatories of the SISTA charter and the France Invest charter for start-up funding, we want to reach 25% by 2025.
What needs to be done to make things go faster?
It is a question of pedagogy. it takes a long time to change culture. We need more equality in investment teams. we know the cognitive bias of investing primarily in what is similar to us. Research like McKinsey’s, which shows that women-led businesses “outperform” when they succeed in raising funds, is also significant. We also support initiatives initiated by SISTA, of which BNP Paribas is a partner, in particular through the SISTA Entrepreneures program. These initiatives aim to support and facilitate investment in businesses created by women. For double impact: economic and social.
*fwe40.com
Source: Le Figaro
