Female Founders Academy assists young women on their way to their own businesses

Olivia Hofmann, founder and CEO of Jobtrüffel GmbH and herself a graduate of the University of Bayreuth, is a mentor at Gründerinnen Akademie. She says: "Founding a business primarily requires perseverance and discipline, and both men and women have that. But I think that women need targeted empowerment. That's what the 'Gründerinnen Akademie' provides."

Participants of the Female Founders Academy are immersed in an innovative environment for three weeks. At the start on 16 March, the female founders will get to know each other at the big kick-off event. The whole thing will be accompanied by a keynote speech by founder Teresa Hertwig from GetRemote. Input sessions on ideation, prototyping, and business model development will follow on the subsequent workshop days. The big final event will then take place live in Passau. There, the founders will present their results and can round off the academy by networking with all the coaches and mentors.

The aim is not only to discover and develop one's own entrepreneurial potential: Inspirational female founders take over the mentoring for the participants. They receive both practice-oriented and science-based input and can thus work on developing their own innovative business ideas. In addition to professional skills such as methods and start-up know-how, the programme also includes personal skills such as self-efficacy, team experience, and social skills.

The free programme is aimed at female students and academic staff of all disciplines. In order to be able to guarantee individual support and an environment of trust, a maximum of 30 participants are planned for the first Female Founders Academy. The workshops will all take place online, so that participants can attend flexibly from their respective locations.

The idea for the event stems from a joint research project conducted by the three universities. It turned out that women have no less ambition to found a company than men, but nevertheless found companies much less frequently. Based on this approach, a format was developed explicitly aimed at female students in order to be able to tap this still unrealized potential. The 'Gründerinnen Akademie' is to serve as a starting point for the development of a supra-regional network in which experience and knowledge regarding the topic of founding can be exchanged.