Students bring female entrepreneurs together

Bringing female entrepreneurs together in one place – both online and in person. A place where they can talk about work, but also where they can take a break from the work environment. Four Fontys students are committed to making this happen.

Accountancy student Parmida Baladi, ICT student Maud Hagens, Sports Science student Bjorn Simons and Business Economics student Memet Can Dursun started the Entrepreneurship minor at Fontys in September. The focus of the course is entirely on setting up a business. What kind of business that is, what its purpose is and which target group it serves is entirely up to the students themselves. This group decided to focus on female entrepreneurs.

The project began with a research phase, during which the four students interviewed 46 female entrepreneurs over a period of one and a half weeks. With a few exceptions, they were all aged between 25 and 55 and worked in a wide variety of sectors.

“The interviews revealed that 78 per cent of the female entrepreneurs struggle to achieve a work-life balance and that 62 per cent feel a greater need to connect and share experiences with other female entrepreneurs,” explains student Maud.

Women Entrepreneurs Society
The minor students felt they had to do something about this. So they started brainstorming. “Eventually, we came up with the idea of setting up a society with the aim of bringing female entrepreneurs together,” says Bjorn. “A place where they can bounce ideas off one another and engage in conversation, but also a place where they can step away from the work environment for a while and develop on a personal level.”

This has resulted in the Women Entrepreneurs Society, a community with two aspects: online and in-person. “The online aspect is a sort of platform where female entrepreneurs can connect with one another via chat functions,” explains Maud, an ICT student.

“But we’re also building in relaxation features. Our discussions have shown that many women feel a greater need for moments of calm during their working days. We want to create these through our platform by sending built-in notifications at specific times, reminding users to take a short break.”

Subscriptions
The in-person aspect of the society consists of monthly events, the first of which is scheduled for Thursday 19 November. Guest speaker Bianca Soetens (herself a successful entrepreneur) will be joining us, and there’s space for thirty women. Or rather, there *was* space for thirty women, as all the tickets have already sold out. “Yes, that happened very quickly,” says Parmida proudly. “But there are more events to come, so anyone interested can sign up for those in advance.”

And the app – can that be downloaded yet? “Not yet, but we’re working hard on it. The same goes for the financial side of things, as the business model still needs to be developed. We want to structure it as a subscription service. Women will then pay a set amount per year and, for that fee, will have unlimited access to the platform and the monthly events.”

text: Karen Luiken