María Salomea Sklodowska was a Polish scientist, born in 1867. From her youth, she knew how to take paths almost unexplored for the female gender of that time. In a context in which, simply because she was a woman, she was not accepted in higher education institutions, María managed to educate herself and, over the years, her discoveries earned her the Nobel Prize in Physics, although, for most of the credit would go to her husband Pierre Curie. Sometime later, alone, Maria would build her own laboratory and in it, she would win her second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry. The one we know today as Marie Curie, became one of the champions of female entrepreneurs and an example of fighting adversity.
The latest GEM report reflects that more and more women are launching into entrepreneurship and reducing the gap with men year after year. In Spain, for example, the gap is 36% lower than in the last 10 years. For those women who, like María Curie, challenge the established and dare to undertake, next November 19th the International Day of Entrepreneurial Women is celebrated.
At EAE we wanted to join in the celebration and we have brought together 4 of our female entrepreneurs to define the 5 most important keys to enjoying the path of entrepreneurship:
The 5 keys for an entrepreneur
The client is the most important. Innovating and undertaking are not for the selfish, it’s not about you, it’s about them.
Ask the market what it needs. Get it wrong fast and cheap. Better done than perfect. The undertaking is about that, about making mistakes, but do it soon and practice fail fast.
Mentality as a tool. A great idea can be coerced by a bad mentality, but working on it is also part of the way.
Community support. Meeting people with the same challenges and problems will make them look smaller.
Patience. It is a basic requirement of entrepreneurship. The time will come, but probably much later than you imagine.
Focus On People
Before starting our venture, we must ask ourselves who our audience will be. Avatar, buyer person, target… surely it has given you more than one headache because especially at the beginning, it is very difficult to define. But when we have done it or we have the first draft, it is really important to carry out a validation before launching your product/service, even if you already have a running company but want to innovate with something new. Asking the target audience serves to adjust the service to what they need. In this way, you can save many hours of launching products and services to a market that nobody is looking for.
No Room For Romance
Don’t fall in love with your business idea. If you think you don’t need a good Business Plan and that your idea is too advanced for the market, you’re not right. “Get it wrong fast and cheap: it’s better done than perfect”, is what we call MPV (minimum viable product). This way you can prototype and move forward by iterating in incremental sprints, where you can rectify and improve the value proposition.
Finally, if you want to undertake, you must know how to sell yourself and your business proposal. Don’t be scared, we’ve all been here, get in touch with other entrepreneurs and create your support network. As Dani Shapiro, a great writer, says: “Confidence is overrated, more important than confidence is courage. Confidence is gained by repeated success, how can you succeed if you have never done it before?
In Search Of The Perfect Wave
Pilar Llácer, LinkedIn Top Voices Spain 2020 and Director of the “Future of Work” Center at EAE.
To be successful, entrepreneurship must meet a clear demand for consumption habits. “Do not insist on surfing if there are no waves”
Entrepreneurship has to serve not only an individual purpose and be aligned with Sustainable Development Goals.
Freedom Makes Up For Everything
Entrepreneurship is not an easy task. No one ever taught the women of my generation how to do it. I found it by chance. At a time when I was looking for a job where I would have the opportunity to do things better. If I had to work until I was 67 (or 75), I wanted to be passionate about work and work on what I was passionate about. In addition, at that time I was a new mother of twins and I was not willing to give up seeing my children grow up in a work conciliation where the managers worked 10 and 11 hours a day. But I was born early and I couldn’t find a company that offered me all that. So in 2014, I founded my own.
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