More female power for Baden-Württemberg: Spotlight on female foundership!
The topic of female entrepreneurship or female foundership offers a huge range of creative & highly relevant business models and Baden-Württemberg also has a large number of success stories of inspiring female founders. Nevertheless, current surveys show that women are still underrepresented in entrepreneurship.
The "Start-up BW Female Accelerator" pilot project was set up as part of the Start-up BW state campaign in order to increase the percentage of women in the start-up scene. The project aims to increase the visibility of female start-ups in Baden-Württemberg and to inspire more women in the fields of entrepreneurship, foundership and start-ups.
4 building blocks for holistic support
Our activities in detail:
Project Component I: Female Founders Accelerating Agency (FFAA)
The FFAA supports female founders through advisory services and the bundling of strategic approaches. It develops measures to increase the visibility of female founders and tracks the number of women entrepreneurs in Baden-Württemberg. The agency provides reliable access to funding, promotes innovation transfer, and coordinates competitions. In addition, it analyzes existing programs, identifies funding gaps, and connects regional stakeholders. Press relations and coordination with federal initiatives are also part of its responsibilities.
Project Component II: Visibility
This component focuses on raising awareness of female entrepreneurship and providing inspiration for women interested in founding a business. Success stories are shared via social media and other channels, and a podcast called “Female Founders Insights” is planned to present inspiring stories of successful entrepreneurs, offering insights into their personal backgrounds and challenges, and featuring supporters and role models from the female startup ecosystem. The Female Accelerator will also actively participate in various events to ensure visible presence and networking opportunities, creating synergies with other ecosystem players.
Startups already founded in Baden-Württemberg with at least 50% women in the founding team can be included in the visibility campaign.
Project Component III: Train-the-Trainer
A workshop concept will be developed to sensitize and qualify stakeholders regarding the needs of female founders. The focus is on overcoming the "confidence gap" and supporting both founders and coaches within the startup ecosystem through the intermediary level.
Project Component IV: Female Founders Community:
In addition to structural measures, the Female Founders Community in Baden-Württemberg will be activated. Female talents, founders, and leaders from business, industry, and academia will be identified and connected. This aims to create reliable access to established industry networks and improve funding opportunities for female founders.
Focus on Female Founders and Ecosystems
Supporting Female Founders
- Increase visibility & provide inspiration
- Facilitate access to funding
- Create future potential
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Support competition formats
Strengthening Ecosystems
- Facilitate innovation transfer
- Identify funding gaps
- Optimize advisory services
- Leverage regional synergies
Inspiring Female Founders from Our Visibility Campaign
Every two weeks, we feature an inspiring female founder and her startup. All profiles can be found on the Start-up BW website and on our LinkedIn account.
Upcoming events
Start-up BW Summit 2025 on June 2 in Stuttgart
The Start-up BW Summit 2024 is a trade fair and congress in the Haus der Wirtschaft with exhibiting start-ups, pitches and keynotes plus a festival on the Börsenplatz with music and informal discussions - right in the heart of Stuttgart. Start-ups, representatives of start-up ecosystems and companies as well as investors from Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Europe and the world meet here to pitch, network, exchange ideas and learn from each other.
Participation is free of charge, registration and all information at https://summit.startupbw.de.
Past events
We invited guests to the public kick-off of the Start-up BW Female Accelerator on January 29, 2024 from 12.30 p.m. in the Neue Schloss, Foyer Weißer Saal, in Stuttgart.
The event was opened by Dr. Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism Baden-Württemberg, and marked the launch of the campaign to raise the profile of successful female start-ups, which is being implemented as part of the Start-up BW Female Accelerator.
Three of these inspiring female founders from Baden-Württemberg took part in an exciting panel talk with Minister Dr. Hoffmeister-Kraut. The final get-together provided an opportunity for exciting discussions and valuable networking.
The event, which was part of the Start-up BW state campaign, was opened at 11.00 a.m. by Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism of Baden-Württemberg.
The intention of the Female Founders FINANCING Forum was to create a platform for the investment and banking world, for female founders and their innovations and for the start-up ecosystems. It is intended to showcase the diversity of different ideas, approaches and offers relating to female financing/female investing, initiate the transfer of know-how among those working in the field or affected by it and develop perspectives for the future through dialog.
Alma Spribille, founder and managing director of WeTell GmbH and board member of the German Sustainable Economy Association, provided exciting insights into female-led start-ups and sustainability in her keynote speech "Female founders and money".
Female founders with innovative business ideas and their financing had their say in the practical start-up talk. Also present were: Maike Lambarth from Cyclize GmbH, Ines Würth from enerlace and Sabrina Hellstern and Claudia Sodha from Hellstern Medical.
The Female Accelerator is initiated by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor and Tourism and is coordinated and implemented by TRACES, the transfer center of the University of Stuttgart.
Our cooperation partners:
Q&A on the Female Accelerator
The ‘Start-up BW Female Accelerator’ pilot project was set up as part of the Start-up BW state campaign, which is being implemented by the University of Stuttgart's Transfer Centre (TRACES), in order to increase the proportion of women in the start-up scene. The project aims to increase the visibility of female start-ups in Baden-Württemberg and to inspire more women in the fields of entrepreneurship, foundership and start-ups.What is the Female Accelerator?
The activities of the Female Accelerator can be divided into structural and practical measures:
The structural activities include the establishment of a Female Founders Accelerating Agency, which acts as a coordinating platform to bundle and further develop all support measures. This also includes the targeted establishment of a Female Founders Community, which networks female founders in the long term and enables effective matchmaking with relevant stakeholders.
The practical activities include cross-media measures to increase the visibility of female founders.
Female founders can therefore take part in our visibility campaign and various event formats, expand their network and gain contacts to other funding programmes and contact points.
Events are published on this page in the ‘Newsfeed’ section and via the Linkedin account TRACES - the Transfer Centre of the University of Stuttgart. Alternatively, interested parties can contact marcel.fortwingel@traces.uni-stuttgart.de.
In our visibility campaign, we give female founders a platform to make their ideas and start-ups visible. Start-ups from all sectors can take part, as long as they have already been founded, at least 50% of the founding team is female and the company is based in Baden-Württemberg.
If you would like to be part of our visibility campaign, you can write a short email to marcel.fortwingel@traces.uni-stuttgart.de. We will get back to you in a timely manner with further information.
No, as a cross-sector accelerator, we are not focussed on a specific industry. Our support services are available to start-ups from all sectors.
An overview of contact points for initial orientation can be found here: First points of contact in THE Start-up LÄND | Start-up BW (only in German)
All Start-up BW accelerators are also listed on the following page: Start-up BW Accelerators get you there | Start-up BW (only in German)
We can provide direct contacts from our broad network, which includes female founders, universities, accelerators and incubators.
On this page, under the menu item ‘Financing’, you will find an overview of various forms of financing, grants and funding opportunities in Baden-Württemberg:
Founding in Baden-Württemberg | Start-up BW (only in German)
Materials to download
Contact
Marcel Fortwingel
Head of Start-up BW Female Accelerator & Catalyst GER
Hanna Dewes
Communication & Public Relations