Marian Spier: “Raising 100 million within 4 weeks. Amazing, but a woman could never manage that”

By Aafke Eppinga

While scientific research repeatedly shows (such as this article, this article, and this article) that diverse and inclusive teams and companies perform better, the Dutch tech sector is only getting more exclusive. In 2022, 0.6 percent of all venture capital was invested in companies with women at the helm. A year earlier, this was one percent. Figures from the Chamber of Commerce show, on the contrary, that more women entrepreneurs were added (34% in 2013, 37% in 2022).

Marian Spier, serial entrepreneur, founder of TEDxAmsterdamWomen, CEO of FEM-START, and social impact & cultural strategist, is just about done with it. “Earlier this year, three French men raised 100 million euros within four weeks. Great, but you would never be able to do that as a woman. There is a bias against which women cannot compete. You can’t change anything if you are systematically ignored. When I started, my motto was: beat the system. Soon I discovered that is an impossible task. Now my motto is: create the system. 

The bias includes investors associating a “good entrepreneur” with masculine characteristics. “People would rather invest in a young man who bluffs and says: in two years I’ll turn two million in sales, rather than in a woman who turns one million in two years and can live up to that and substantiate her figures well.”

It’s also a systematic problem; much attention goes to masculine themes such as deep tech and AI. At the same time, women tend to be in health tech, social tech, and sustainability. “So there is a mismatch. In this, the government also has a responsibility. The gap will only widen when all the money goes to deep tech and AI.”

“People would rather invest in a young man who bluffs and says: in two years I will turn two million in sales, rather than in a woman who will turn one million in sales in two years and can really live up to that.”

Marian Spier

Bluff above well-reasoned calculations

If men don’t invest in women, women will do it themselves. That’s why Spier wants to create a system within which women have access to a network, investment, and education. In 2023, with associates Sandra van der Pal, Ellen Tacoma, and Simone van Bijsterveldt, she founded the education platform FEM-START. In addition to the annual FEM-START Up Awards (made possible by Antler), the platform organizes meetings, education, and mentoring.

A trip to Silicon Valley

Not only in the Netherlands is there a funding gap – companies founded by women only receive less than three percent of venture capital investments worldwide. The world is doing badly, but the Netherlands is doing particularly badly.

The prize of the FEM-START Up Awards that Spier organizes for women entrepreneurs on top of the hundred thousand euro prize money is a trip to Silicon Valley. Last year, sisters Micky and Linky Chen won with their company Minite; a marketplace for students and businesses.

“The mindset in the US is very different,” says Micky Chen. “Gender plays much less of a role there than it does here. You can see it in the type of questions investors ask. If we say to a VC here, ‘We’re going to 100 percent growth,’ chances are the answer will be something along the lines of ‘Well, that’s ambitious. Is that going to happen?’ Whereas in the US, they say, ‘Why don’t we see if five hundred percent works out?'”

Education as a spearhead

So male investors don’t like that women entrepreneurs take less risk, but if they dare to be ambitious, it’s not good either. Spier herself has not been so bothered by prejudice. She attributes that to the fact that she has been in the tech sector for years and “speaks the language.” Two years ago, she completed her degree in Venture Finance at Oxford University.

Education is one of FEM-START’s main focuses, as women have a lot of ground to make up regarding knowledge about the funding landscape. The organization offers two courses: one on different funding types – like grants, funding, bootstrap, and crowdfunding – and one on when to use which type best. The second course is a conversation between an investor and a startup, where the investor helps the entrepreneur prepare for investment.

No supermen, no rock’n’roll – the laws of business also apply to start-ups

A start-up differs from an established company in a number of aspects. There is usually a lack of money, their dependence on third parties is is relatively high, and there is a constant search for a scalable business model.

‘All entrepreneurs want the same thing’

After education comes networking; together with the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, TNW, and HighTech XL in Eindhoven, FEM-TECH organizes preselection events for the Awards. Nine hundred women entrepreneurs have now joined the platform. But not only women attend the meetings. Precisely not. “Entrepreneurship is not masculine or feminine. All entrepreneurs want the same thing: to solve a problem and make money from it.”
The Chen sisters have now completed their first investment round of 300,000 euros. With ease, there was more enthusiasm than tickets. “You must have a good story, but your numbers are just as important. We show that we understand our business very well and have proven that we can execute it. That sharp focus has gotten us where we are today,” Chen said.

Spier is far from finished. Her ultimate goal is to collaborate with governments to make a change on a large scale. “We ultimately want to make it easier for women worldwide to access networks.”

Women entrepreneurs can apply for the FEM-START Up Awards (powered by Antler) at this link.

We can’t download a safe, green future from the app store

“What real impact means? I can pick you up now and drive to a place in Bergen op Zoom where a factory breeds millions of insects.