#26: One year of podcasting, or how giving up on a designer bag can help female founders - Katia Yakovleva, Bettine Schmitz
This is a joint episode with the Female Business Angel Podcast hosted by Katia Yakovleva and Bettine Schmitz. We launched our shows more or less at the same time, one year ago. Darya, Bettine and Katia talk about one year of podcasting, their learnings, angel investing and the outlook for female founders.
One year of podcasting
Darya, Katia and Tine share why they launched their shows and what kind of space they wanted to create. As a content creator, you have a chance to become an opinion leader, you can even start a movement and drive change you want to see.
Here’s Darya’s most unexpected learning after 1 year of podcasting: you may underestimate the scale of what you are building. From the inside, it may look much smaller than from the outside.
Learnings from interviewing business angels
Katia and Tine share advice with anyone interested in exploring angel investing. Do you need to be rich to start? What are the first steps? What is one most typical mistake almost every angel make?
Angel investment is a marathon, so, you will need patience and a driving force to keep you running. For many, it’s curiosity. At the same time, financing startups can become an enormous source of energy. When you fall in love with founder’s vision, you help to make it a reality.
Funding for women-led companies
Despite all the emerging funds focusing on women-led companies, the percentage of venture capital allocated to women-led startups has been shrinking. We speak about reasons behind this negative trend and the role that funds with a gender lens play.
About Katia Yakovleva
Katia is a Berlin-based entrepreneur currently working on her next venture. Previously, she had spent more than a decade at Spotify and co-founded a web3 analytics startup. She is an active angel investor and - a mentor at Techstars and other startup accelerators.
About Bettine Schmitz
Bettine is a believer in the unharnessed potential of female founders. To this end she set up Auxxo - an investment company focusing on female entrepreneurs. Prior to that, she accelerated nearly 100 companies at Axel Springer Plug and play and has made nearly 20 angel investments.
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