女性创业者：金融科技产业的“她力量”

近些年来，性别多样性和性别平等运动席卷全球。

Twitter推出#男性支持女性#、#我也是#、#我们在一起#活动。联合国可持续发展目标也提出积极推动性别平等。而非盈利倡议活动“女性投资女性”项目则努力帮助女性创业者获得项目启动资金。

近日，科技媒体平台Techcrunch发布了一份《2018年第一季度全球多元化投资报告：女性创始人的投资趋势》的文件，其中列举了不少女性创业者或创始人为女性的创业公司的资金的大量统计资料。比如，

1. 2018年一季度，至少有一位女性创始人的公司得到的投资额只占总风险投资额的9％。
2. 2018年一季度投资额同比增长60％
3. 2018年一季度创始人为女性的公司获得投资额只占总风险投资额的3％。
4. 2018年一季度，至少有一位女性创始人的公司获得的种子投资占所有种子投资的18％，同比数据为17％

仔细观察筹集的资金或交易数量后我们不难发现，虽然总体情况不尽人意，但是整体趋势仍然是在向积极方向变化。

以下我们就为您列举几个金融科技领域中正在崛起的“她力量”。

Wobe

Adrianna Tan是Wobe的联合创始人，印度尼西亚人。 Wobe（发音为'Woh-Bay'）向东南亚无银行账户人群提供电子钱包服务，以便于他们使用智能手机进行小额支付。使用该APP，任何人都可以创业，销售预付费电话余额以及电水费抵用券，这在东南亚很常见。

两年前，Wobe在印度尼西亚东南亚地区女性创业比赛以及加利福尼亚女性创业全球总决赛中一举夺冠。因此，比赛裁判Tim Draper决定在公司的种子轮融资中投资10万美元。此外，新加坡Wavemaker Partners基金也参与了之前的融资轮次，并通过Draper网络推介Wobe。

目前Wobe已经完成种子融资和2轮风险投资，具体金额总数并未对外透露。

Wala

Tricia Martinez是Wala的联合创始人，Wala是一个针对南非无银行账户人群的金融应用程序。Wala拥有稳步增长的100万社区用户，提供包括免费汇款服务、10多个国家的通话时间和互联网数据无手续费购买服务、智能客服、无手续费账单支付服务。最近，Wala还推出了代币DALA，把使用已经免费或无手续费Wala服务的奖励代币化。DALA ICO筹集了120万美元。去年秋天，Wala从Newton Partners获得了种子投资，具体金额未知。

据了解，Wala此前刚刚完成了总额120万美元的ICO。

Bitpesa

来自肯尼亚的比特币支付公司Bitpesa已有4年的历史，专注于使用比特币/区块链进行跨境支付（FX和B2B）。公司在拉各斯、达喀尔和伦敦设有办事处。

此前，数百万美元的银行转账交易会整整一周都“毫无音讯”。此外，当地银行会索要6500美元的中介服务费才签发5000美元额度的信用卡，首席执行官伊丽莎白·罗西洛希望通过这一个个“恐怖故事”让我们了解非洲银行业的原始状态和巨大潜在商机。

据了解，目前Bitpesa已经完成了1000万美元融资。

以上这些创企都是真真正正的金融科技创企，都拥有一定规模的用户群体、可操作性的应用程序平台和固定的规模市场，但是只是由于其创始团队是女性或者其中有女性成员，这些创企所获得资金支持却远远不如同类其他企业，这样的情况的确值得我们深思和改进。

 

Advocacy for gender diversity continues. The advocacy drums are louder and louder every day. Twitter handles #mensupportingwomen, #metoo, #WeUniteWe and the 5th SDG dedicated to Gender equality, are just a few examples of campaigns. The Decade of Women was created as an action-focused campaign to support SDG5. Women investing in women is one not-for-profit campaign along those lines and All Raise.

Techcrunch published recently the Q1 2018 global diversity investment report: Investing trends in female founders and showcased All Raise. Lots of statistics around funding of startups with females in the founding team or solo female founders. Looking at either dollars raised or number of deals. Checking seed deals which are leading indicators or later stage venture funding. Things look better if you look close enough and make an effort to pick one positive statistic for every disappointing one.

Here are some of my morning efforts:

1.  “$ invested in Q1 2018, into companies with at least one female founder were just 9% of venture dollars invested”
2.  “$ invested in Q1 2018, were up 60% from $ invested in Q1 2017”
3. “$ invested in Q1 2018, invested in solo female founders were only 3% of venture dollars.
4. “Seed $ invested in Q1 2018, into companies with at least one female founder were 18% of all seed dollars, compared to 17% in Q1 2017”

Fintechs targeting the underbanked, led by female founders

Adrianna Tan is the co-founder of Wobe, out of Indonesia. Wobe ((pronounced ‘Woh-Bay’) offers to the Southeast Asian unbanked an to perform an e-wallet to make micropayments on their smartphones. The app also allows anyone to start a business by selling prepaid phone credit as well as electricity and water vouchers, a common practice in Southeast Asia.

Two years ago Wobe won the regional Southeast Asia Her Startup competition in Indonesia and then the Her Startup Global Finals Competition in California. As a result, Tim Draper who was a judge at the event, decided to invest $100,000 in the company’s seed round. Also, The Singaporean Wavemaker Partners fund had also participated in earlier funding rounds and was instrumental in introducing Wobe across the Draper Network (more details).

Total funding: All undisclosed: Seed and 2 venture rounds

Tricia Martinez is the co-founder of Wala, the financial app for the unbanked starting out in South Africa. With already 1 million users in the community that has grown organically, they offer a free remittance service, a no-fee service to buy airtime and internet data in over 10 countries, bot support, no-fee bill payments. Recently, Wala also launched its token, DALA, that is essentially tokenizing rewards for using the already free or no-fee Wala services. Dala ICO raised $1.2mil. Wala’s seed investment was from Newton Partners last fall.

Total funding: $1.2mil ICO, Seed + Newton partners undisclosed.

We all know about Bitpesa out of Kenya, already 4 yrs old, focused on using Bitcoin/Blockchain for cross border payments (FX and B2B). With offices now in  Lagos, Dakar and London. Elizabeth Rossiello is the CEO is continuously reminding us of the primitive state of banking in Africa, with horror stories of millions of bank transfers for trade being lost for a week, or local banks requiring $6,500 escrow payment to issue a credit card with $5,000 limit.

Total funding: $10mil

Source of funding figures = Crunchbase.

These are all real fintechs that have communities, apps that are fully operational, a solid addressable market, but seem to have as much backing as they deserve.