Barclays CTO Helps Spearhead Female-Entrepreneurs Program
17 Outubro 2019 - 5:55PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Castellanos
Barclays PLC and venture-capital firm Anthemis Group are looking
for women with ideas for financial-technology startups, hoping some
of them can start businesses that can eventually sell the
London-based bank new software or other products.
The idea behind the Female Innovators Lab is to connect women
entrepreneurs with their first round of venture-capital
funding.
The initiative is spearheaded in part by John Stecher, group
chief technology officer at Barclays. "In my career, I've seen how
having a really diverse leadership team, and varied perspectives in
general, leads to better products," said Mr. Stecher, who is also
the bank's chief innovation officer.
The organizations will select several women by the first quarter
of 2020 to work at Anthemis's New York offices. Once they have a
business model, they will be able to move into Barclays's
64,000-square-foot workspace for startups in Manhattan.
Last year, women-founded companies received 2.3% of the total
capital invested in venture-backed startups in the U.S., according
to data firm PitchBook Data Inc. About $131 billion was invested
across about 8,950 deals in 2018.
Businesses founded by women deliver more than twice as much
revenue per dollar invested than those founded by men, according to
a 2018 Boston Consulting Group study.
The goal is for participants to ultimately build businesses that
will become Barclays vendors, Mr. Stecher said: "We have a number
of things we need to accomplish that we don't want to build
proprietary."
For example, Barclays is looking for software that could help
when onboarding new customers and clients, such as identity
validation, he said. The company also is interested in
customer-facing software that appeals to specific target-age
demographics, such as mobile apps for different banking
services.
Barclays and Anthemis will connect participants with mentors
within the two organizations to help them build out their ideas and
get venture-capital funding.
The founders also will get access to mentorship from a broader
network of startups that Barclays has invested in over the past
five years.
"Something that can't be discounted when you're an entrepreneur
is how little access you have to a wide mentoring network," Mr.
Stecher said.
Barclays and Anthemis will select entrepreneurs for the program
who have a strong sense of purpose and a high level of conviction
around their ideas, said Amy Nauiokas, founder and chief executive
of Anthemis, which invests in early-stage financial technology
startups.
"It doesn't take rocket science to recognize there's some real
opportunity to spend time helping fund, nurture and build
up...women's companies," Ms. Nauiokas said, who was a Barclays
executive from 2004 to 2008.
Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 17, 2019 16:40 ET (20:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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