With only 30 per cent of businesses/entrepreneurs successfully growing their brand from start-up to scale-up, it was no surprise that Female Techprenuer chose this as their first webinar in 2021.
Female Techpreneur, an organization founded by Bukky Babajide for female-led tech businesses, founders, leaders, business owners to connect them to mentors, thought leaders, grants, investors, education, business support and so much more!
Earlier this month, Female tech founders gathered on the Scale-up your startup Webinar hosted by Female Techpreneur.
The event was targeted at business owners/entrepreneurs who believe their business is ready for a scale-up. It also has top tech experts and CEOs give educating and empowering discussions on actionable tips on taking your brand from startup to joining the big leagues in the industry.
Meet the Host
Bukky Babajide CEO Female Techpreneur
Bukky Babajide is an experienced Delivery, Project and Business Change Consultant with a successful track record of delivering major multiple complex global change projects and programmes of work and implementing business transformation within the Fintech, Energy, Education and Technology industries.
The Speakers
Meet the speakers who gave quite astonishing insights into Business start-ups, growing and attracting the right market and many more. They also shared useful tips and business secrets, which goes further to portray their expertise and experience in their chosen fields as they are living examples of success.
Milly Elvis- CEO Box Of Intimate
Milly is a French FashTech entrepreneur and consultant, passionate and fervent about innovative technologies, she is actively engaged in the New York and London startup community. She also has vast knowledge and experience in technology, e-commerce, AI, robotics, blockchain, digital marketing, fashion retail and intimate apparel.
Milly talked about the importance of startups to have at least these few things before considering scaling up.
Differences Between Growing a Business & Scaling-up a Business
Milly gave an enlightening lecture stating the difference between Growing a business and actually Scaling-up a business.
Going further to explain this, she mentioned Growing has to do with you attracting more customers or clients to your brand. While Scaling-up on the other hand deals with you expanding your business beyond your national demographics.
Good Advisory Board
She went further to offer advice on the importance of having a good advisory board that resonates with your company and its values. Members of your advisory board must bring valuable expertise and possible connections to help your business scale.
The Power Of Networking
Milly emphasised on the power of networking. She explained the need for startups to establish a mutually benefited relationship with other businesses creating an avenue to attract more customers and at the same time, gain more knowledge from other experts.
Tommie Edwards- CEO Tedbree
Tommie Edwards is an award-winning Tech entrepreneur and the Group Chief Executive of Tedbree. Financial Times and Inclusive Boards named Tommie amongst the Top 100 Most Influential BAME Leaders in Tech UK for her work at Tedbree in 2019.
Tommie explained that while entrepreneurship has its honey and milk, it also has its ups and downs, and as a start-up, you should prepare for both. Tommie went on to shed more light on the meaning of scaling by explaining that to Scale means having a working system in place and experiencing growth even without your physical presence.
She also pointed out certain things that should be in place before a business is seen as being ready to scale, such as:
The Uniqueness of Your Product Or Service.
Is your product a pain killer? meaning, is your business solving a unique problem that a lot of other businesses encounter regularly? Or is it a vitamin, which basically enhances an already existing solution? For your business to scale you have to figure out which among the two, is your business.
A Streamlined Business Process
Tommie mentioned that for a business to scale, your business process has to be tight and streamlined to give a unique user experience. Where there are dropoffs within the process, it could have negative effects as manual tasks would have to kick-in, which will stop the business from scaling. She further said that its important for a business to consider its people, its systems and processes as one.
Building Collaborative Partnerships
Having a good number of strategic partners is also another area to consider when scaling your business. She stated that finding partners that align with your brand will give room for business growth and an increase in product/service sales, which ultimately allows for scaling.
Sourcing For Funds
Tommie highlighted funding as a crucial element of scaling. She mentioned that for a business to scale, it needs to have enough runway to carry the business from one point to another through the various stages of growth.
The Webinar concluded with questions and answers from the attendees some of the questions asked included the alternative source of funding, which was answered. Bukky closed with inviting the attendees to participate in the next webinar to be hosted by Female Techprenuer and more info on that can be seen on their website.
