'What if you fail?' Catalan female entrepreneurs fight gender bias

Women in the tech field are few and far between. Catalonia is one of Europe’s tech hubs, and 2024 was a record-breaking year with over 2,285 emerging companies, according to data from ACCIÓ, the Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness. 

But despite this apparent success, women co-founding and leading tech startups still only made up less than 20% in 2022. 

As discouraging as this figure may sound, it’s 2.6 percentage points higher than the European Union average, making Barcelona second only to Berlin as the European capital with the most female-funded startups. 

During this year’s edition of the world’s largest tech fair, the Mobile World Congress (MWC), a similar picture was painted.  

Although 41% of the invited speakers were women, such as Maja Završnik, the CMO and co-founder of SheAI, an educational platform dedicated to empowering women in business through AI, only 27% of the 109,000 attendees were women.  

Moreover, the exact number of female exhibitors is anyone’s guess, as it was not made public. 

Fighting stigmas in femtech 

In the sea of navy-blue suits among the flashing screens, Catalan News found some female entrepreneurs eager to share their experiences in the 4YFN pavilion.  

“Being a woman entrepreneur is a hard but interesting process,” explains Talia Leibovitz, the CEO and co-founder of Kala Health, an app designed to help women through their menopause.

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Leibovitz is not only a CEO in tech, but in femtech, or technology tailored to women’s health, which she calls a “double challenge”.    

"We’re fighting taboos as a female run startup and also to end the stigma surrounding menopause,” says Leibovitz, who created the app because it was something that she was missing.

Maria Berruezo is another woman in the femtech sector. She is the co-founder and CEO of LactApp, a breastfeeding and maternity app, that she created after becoming a mother. 

“I was lost, I felt lonely and in need of support, answers, and a community,” she said, adding that women are an “underserved market.”  

Although she too initially felt lonely and like she “didn’t belong” when she became a CEO, she also felt a lot of support from other women, which encouraged her to keep going.

While speaking to Catalan News, one attendee at the congress came up to Maria to thank her for creating the app, which she said had helped her through the “difficult moments” of becoming a mother.  

"What if you fail?” 

The need for a supportive community is evident in conversations with the women, each of whom had several anecdotes about the biases they have faces as women in business and tech, ranging from skepticism to being called “a great assistant” to the CEO.  

“When men see a female founder, they think ‘Oh, you probably have a cute business, or something girly,’” explains Elena Zangeeva, the CEO and co-founder of Kvistly, an educational quiz platform.  

She explains that many of the biases against women in business translate into a lack of encouragement: “Men in startups get asked how to achieve the goals they set, while women get asked ‘what if you fail?’” 

But she asserts, that “the greatest products are created by diverse talents,” across gender, race and ethnicity.  

With a laugh, Elena offers a well-known anecdote: “NASA wanted to send a woman into space with 600 tampons."

Lack of funding

However, one thing that is no laughing matter is the lack of funding, which is one of the most significant hurdles that women entrepreneurs have to overcome. 

And this, too, is something that all the women Catalan News spoke to insisted on. 

"Only 2% of women actually receive venture capital funding even though it’s proven that they are better at returning investments,” says Maja Završnik, the CMO and co-founder of SheAI, an educational platform dedicated to empowering women in business through AI. 

Additionally, less than 1% of female entrepreneurs have received bank loans, and have had to either use up own savings, sell a previous business or borrow money from friends and family.  

“Some studies prove that businesses led by women are successful than those led by men” says Carmen Rios, the founder and CEO of Doctomatic medical equipment, “70% compared to 58% of men.” 

Educating and relearning

While all the women hope for more political change, they also agree that the way forward is to take matters into their own hands and follow their instinct.  

“Unfortunately, laws are taking too long, and we don’t have time to waste,” says Maja, adding “Instead of fighting patriarchal structures, we’re building own systems.” 

For Ángela Agraz Capella, founder of the language learning platform Bamboleo Talk, women need to trust themselves and their project, “speak up” and “not listen too much” to what others say.

When women start their own businesses, they become the role models that they themselves didn’t have, asserts Carmen Rios, the founder of CEO of Doctomatic: “When I was a little girl, I didn’t really have anyone in the business world that I could look up to, so now I see it as my responsibility to show my nieces and nephew that it’s possible.” 

Elena adds that we also need to change the way we raise children. 

“We teach boys to be brave, but we teach girls to be perfect,”she says, adding that as an entrepreneur nothing “is perfect. You have to act, move fast, be brave and be unstoppable.” 

But the lesson goes beyond people. Machines and algorithms also need to be reprogrammed so they don’t discriminate, says Elena, who offers an example from when she worked in HR: 

“Amazon wanted to automate their CV screening process, but the machine rejected female applicants, because it was learning based on successful hires, which were all men.”

A beautiful journey

Despite the challenges, the women agree that becoming an entrepreneur is positive. 

Ángela and Maja call it an “adventure” and a “beautiful journey”. 

“It can bring unbelievable opportunities that you might not have even thought about,” she says, noting that SheAI partnered with the United Nations “AI for good” project and was invited to speak at the MWC.  

“Don’t be afraid to just go after what you want!” she exclaims.