WA4E - Women Angels for Europe´s Entrepreneurs
PROMOTE WOMEN BUSINESS ANGELS
WA4E is a program that aims to strengthen European Entrepreneurship by enrolling more women in early stage investing in order to:
- increase the total number of angel investors
- increase the diversity of skills within the Busines Angel community, thus resulting in improving the efficiency of Business Angels Networks
- increase the supply of finance and associated support to early stage businesses.
Having more women on the funding side matters because:
- Angel groups with a higher representation of women tend to attract and consider a higher percentage of women owned firms.
- Women dominated angel investors groups devote a higher percentage of their investments to women owned firms.
The PROGRAM consists of a 24 month duration initiative led by Business Angel Europe and supported by the European Commison, it takes place in 6 target Countries (France, UK, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal).
WA4E builds on the deep experience of the partners that represent 4 Business Angels Networks (Angel Academie, Be Angels, Femme Business Angels, IESE business angels network), 2 Business Angels federations (UKBAA, IBAN) and WomenWinWin, a not-for-profit association of Women Entrepreneurs.
It expects to mobilise more than €2,5mln as investments made by Women Business Angels through the organisation of 42 pitching events and to increase the number of Women Business Angels by 10% overall in the target countries through the implementation of a dedicated training and mentoring programmes.
Specific training sessions to Women Entrepreneurs will also take place during the programme with the obective to better prepare them to meet investors’ expectations and to improve their presentation capacities to access angel financing.
In-depth research (surveys & interviews) will be implemented to better understand the needs and constraints hampering participation of women to angel investing activities.
