Tech Ready Women launches in Queensland to provide funding boost for local female-founded startups
Tech Ready Women launches in Queensland to find and support the state’s most promising female-founded start-ups.
Tech Ready Women helps women to start, build, and accelerate their business and careers in tech through a supportive community that grows networks, provides advice and mentorship, bolsters skills, and improves confidence. It has supported 3,000 female founders in New South Wales in the last seven years, and has now expanded to include Queensland.
Queensland’s capital Brisbane has one of the best startup ecosystems in the world ranked at number 34, and nationally, the state outperforms the rest of Australia with 20.2 per cent of total businesses in Queensland as startups, compared to 19.1 per cent nationally.
However, female founded startup funding across Australia continues to drag with only four per cent of total startup funding going to all-female-founded businesses and 12 per cent of funding deals going to the same cohort.
Tech Ready Women, with the assistance of Queensland Government’s Department of Environmental, Science and Innovation’s Accelerating Female Founders Program, is set to address this funding gap in the state through Tech Ready Women’s ‘Investment Ready Program’.
The program will run over two years and be used to bolster Queensland female founders’ skills and help prepare them for raising capital. The Queensland Government will also be using the program to assess startups and as their channel to investment.
Chief Executive Officer of Scalare Partners, a tech accelerator firm that is soon to list on the ASX and owner of Tech Ready Women, Carolyn Breeze (pictured), said the program and the Queensland Government’s support is a welcome step in the right direction for equally funding women-founded startups compared to men-founded businesses.
“There is way to go for Australia for bringing female-founded startups on par with male-founded startups and the Queensland Government is helping the nation push towards a fairer ecosystem.
“Australia has some of the best startup talent in the world. It has produced businesses that were barely on the map but are now taking the world by storm and it is important for Australian women to be a part of that mix by shaking up the sector.
“Our Investment Ready Program is the right fit for this initiative, as it provides women with the skills and knowledge needed for capital raisings, along with connections, a supportive network, and confidence to scale startups.
“We are now getting set up to work with the Queensland recipients of the grants to help equip them to grow and scale their businesses and lead the way nationally for the startup ecosystem,” Breeze ended.
