Written on March 22, 2008 – 3:02 pm
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
As the second of the series ‘Where are the female web heroes?’ I describe the situation in the UK, where as of 2003, a rise in female-owned net ventures have been seen. The government’s newly formed Women’s Enterprise Task Force seeks to encourage female enterprise across the nation to help close the gap in female entrepreneurship between the US and UK. Because, although the number of women-owned businesses has recently topped one million, the rate of female start-ups in the US is much higher. Also, with girls outperforming boys at school some predict that by 2020 the majority of UK millionaires will be female.
The UK female entrepreneur is in her early 30s, tech savvy, well connected and thrives on risk, according to a survey by Aurora, the UK’s largest business women’s network. This network is owned by Glenda Stone, who herself won the Blackberry Best Women in Technology. One of the women who fits this profile is Martha-Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com. As the time she stepped down at 31 years, the share price had recovered from the dotcom crash valuing Lastminute at £667m. In 2005 she sold the company to travelocity.com, of which Michelle Peluso is the CEO. In those days also Julie Pankhurst of Friends Reunited sold her company, to ITV.
For most Internet female entrepreneurs in the UK, entrepreneurship appears to be a mid-life choice. Between the ages of 35 and 50, women leave successful careers to start their businesses. They are driven by innovation, a strong commitment to entrepreneurial ideals and autonomy in their work lives. Examples thereof are Sian Sutherland, founder of Mama Mio, skincare for super mamas, and Marcelle Speller founder of holidayrentals.co.uk, which has in the meantime been sold to Homeaway.Inc. (more…)
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Written on March 12, 2008 – 5:43 pm
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London.
Last week at London Open Coffee Meet-up, the issue of female speakers at the Next Web Conference and the lack thereof came up, as discussed earlier by Boris and Patrick. To finally tackle the issue, I promised to come up with a list of 100 international female tech and web heroes. Indeed, I had some practice at restaurant review site Iens, where I once put together a top 20 of female chefs.
Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook
Let’s first state that I have been able to track down a number of amazing web women. My focus was on web entrepreneurs, investors and CEO’s in the Internet world. But I also came across highly regarded female cross media consultants, power bloggers and other independent professionals, as well a talented mid level managers.
My first place for research was LinkedIn. Yet ‘internet’, ‘ceo’ and ‘entrepreneur’ resulted in many men, but few women. Maybe they can add as search option ‘female’. When I googled a bit on the same terms, many initiatives focusing on women leadership sprung forward. (more…)
Written on December 30, 2007 – 2:47 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
After the post about the need for a female Steve Jobs and in search for a female role model I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at technology conferences.
Go to any web conference (LeWeb3, TechCrunch40, The Next Web, FOWA, you name it..) and one thing that cannot go by unnoticed is that almost all speakers are men. There are a few simple explanations for this (apart from the standard explanations), one of them is that men tend to be more passionate about technology and the web then women do. Another can be that men are at higher or at least more ‘visible’ positions. Also it may be that men are more experienced speakers. But the web is new, it transforms things, it changes the way we do business and it shouldn’t make any difference between men and women. As it is a fairly new sector, it exists only 5000 days, this is THE opportunity for talented women to take the lead over men (not that it should be like a kind of war).
I believe there is a huge opportunity for talented women to become the most wanted speakers in the tech scene. Conferences are more then willing to invite women to their stage (they have to be really good though). So who are the women we all should watch? Some of the women I’m following are:
To get Web 2.0 to the next level we need a female Steve Jobs. A woman with passion for the web, amazing presentation skills and humor.
I’m looking forward to see more women speaking at events (also at The Next Web conference, to write about startups founded by women, to know what is going on on the female side of the web (so if there are women who like to write for The Next Web, please let us know).
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
