Hello, everyone. Um I'm really happy to see you here. I hope you can hear me well and see me. Well, my name is Irene Fiala. I'm CEO of in its the high tech incubator in the city of Vienna.Um We have served start ups here in our ecosystem since almost 20 years and I've been CEO of in its for nine years now. Um And I will give you a quick overview of what is happening here, what we do. Um And then enter into a discussion. I'm sharing my screen now and hope this works well. I hope you can see um my slides um best you, you speak up because now I cannot see the chat any longer. Um in its is Vienna's high tech incubator. Um We run various programs. Our core program is really a plus B scale up that we have run for 20 years now with a focus on entrepreneurship at universities. So the purpose of this program was to get more of the research results back to the society in the form of innovation. Um We have been doing this since 20 years, as I said, um and realize that sometimes it's not the academic researcher who is the entrepreneur, but we need to be looking for entrepreneurs to take, for instance a patent into a start up. Um And that's why we started another program on the left hand side here, start IP which tries to match um high tech inno innovation potential from an academic institution or also other research institutions with entrepreneurs.

Um Since 2017, we also invest in our start ups up to €100,000 only into those that have made it into the incubation program. So the purpose of this money is really to help the spin off from the academic landscape uh here in Vienna to grow faster and speed up at the very early stage. Um And since 2018, we run an acceleration and open innovation platform with a focus on health tech, uh digital health um med tech start ups. Um at a later stage, the purpose of health at Vienna is really to work together with all the stakeholders in the healthcare system and um and uh help start up start ups to enter really the the the industry, the the health care really reach out to patients and doctors. So uh the start ups there in that program needs be further advanced, they need to have raised more money already. Um They need to have a product somewhere in a healthcare system no matter whether it's in India, Austria, um South Africa or the United States or Israel. So this is an overview of um of the programs we run.

Um What, what we can say about our incubation programs where we really focus on the early stage is that um as compared to a peer group um in the same industries, our start ups that have run through our program, um outperform in many different ways, uh they survive uh at a higher rate, at a much higher rate, they grow bigger, both in staff members as well as sales figures.

They have a higher export intensity and a higher research and development intensity. So in all economic really relevant factors, they outperform those who have not gone through our incubation program. And that was a study being done by research and economic research organization here in Austria.

Um I would like to take you on the time travel. Um This was when I joined in it as a start up consultant in 2004. And if you can, you can see on the pictures, this is one woman in the middle, really highlighted, but it's pretty much the only one woman in the room. Um This is how it looked in 2006. Not much has changed. This is 2008. You see a few more female faces sitting in the room. This is 2010 in the beautiful uh Cooper of the University of Technology here in Vienna where we have many of our events. Um already more female faces to be seen. This is 2012 and I would like to stick to this year a little bit longer because what you can see here in the middle, um the blonde woman is um Professor Seidler, who was vice rector of the University of Technology here in Vienna um already before and became the first ever female rector of the University of Technology in Vienna in 2011.

And still one of the very very few female uh rectors of University of Technology globally, I would say and I believe that this was a very important move um to really have female faces being shown on the on the level on the real top level of universities. Also on her, on her right side here on the picture on the left hand side, this is also vice rector of the University of Vienna, um um uh uh vice Director for Research and Development and um both universities are our shareholders. I believe this was very, very important. Plus in 2012, um it was also me taking over the leadership of in its itself which then increased the speed and it will also increase the speed of our time travel. Here. You can realize even a higher percentage of females. This is a picture from a demo day taken where the uh the start ups on the screen presented their business ideas and you can see that on the entrepreneurial level, there is quite a number of female faces popping up. 2018, looks like this or looked like this. Um And this is 2020 start IP the program with a focus on finding entrepreneurs. Um And here you can see we are pretty much getting closer to um leveling out uh the the number differences between female and male faces. And if we look at the numbers on the entrepreneurs level, 2020 is really a highlight last year.

Although the pandemic was really roaring in, in Austria also, of course, um the number of start ups and founders who made it into our program was one third female, which is really exceptionally high. Um And half of the teams had at least one female co-founder um of the teams who made it into the incubator. Also, this very same year, Vienna was highlighted as number one of female for city in Europe. Um If it comes to female founders, um according to the start up heat up and I gave you the source of this uh study also what we started in 2020 also was moving digitally um like many others. Um And also there, we tried to really show the female faces and successful faces that we have also in the start ups that have been going already for a longer time and we, you know, lowering percentage um back then. Um And here are some examples. Um quite a number of them have female co-founders, Marino made for instance, a biotech company, they also develop anti COVID therapies right at the moment. Um And the CTO CSO is um a dear friend of mine if a pretty class. So my sugar um is, is a sheer male team, very successful, but it's embedded between Medicus A I with the female co-founder and Rob Bunda um who has a female CEO um as well as Zuu um who was the major face to the outside world was the main co-founder.

But uh the CTO of that company developing online assist uh sales assistant um is, is a lady. Um a really exceptional lady. So we cannot do that without partners. This is the partners we work with. Um This is big names also included, but also more regional names that you might not might not tell you anything. Um um And we cannot do that without uh strong networks. Two of those networks I uh uh personally co-founded. One has a focus on female investors um which is very, very important also to foster the development of female founders. Um And the other has a focus on women in health. It, we are not only women uh the purpose of women in health, it is to um increase the inclusion of females um in the decision making process in the programming process of digital health. Um And I cordially invite you to join us at one of our women health breakfast, the it, breakfasts, the next one will be held in English. So maybe that's a good start for you. Um If you're interested in this is also a set of links that I would like to share with you afterwards also as a PDF. And by that, I am happy to take your questions and stop sharing my screen. All right.

Um Are there any questions can you um speak up and you know, share your video and, and um Mike, otherwise, I would just take questions from the chat. Also input from the chat. What is your experience in um in female entrepreneurship in the specific technology driven domain? Still you have a question but obviously you cannot turn on your mic. Can you type the question? Go ahead.

Hi,

here we go. I still,

I've got two screens. Um uh I am in fact a female uh founder in the tech industry. Um And uh let me just move on to my other screen so I can see properly and there you go. And uh I love what you're doing at the moment. Uh I love what you're doing. I have a question for you. Your um programs. Are they connected? Do you have mentors or how do you support your start ups going through their, through their journey?

Yeah. Yeah. So if it comes to the people and the know how because we serve all the universities, the, the spectrum of industries that we have to cover is very, very broad. So no matter how big the team would be of in it, um we could never cover everything by ourselves. So from the very beginning we worked, um let's call it in onion shells. We have a very diverse team really being employees of in it, supporting the start ups by directly coaching and consulting them and guiding them, connecting them to investors, partners, et cetera. Um But then there is the group of mentors around that. Um And that really has grown enormously over time because um one big pool of mentors we really use is our own alumni. So we always reach out um to, to those that have gone through these kinds of situations, the younger ones, let's call it like that. Um Just are going through. Plus we have another group of partners which we call preferred partners. This is all kinds of service providers, tax lawyers, law firms, uh patent lawyers, regulatory fairs, consultants, um also, you know, programming uh companies, etcetera. So everything that um that the start ups need um and have to outsource anyway.

Um Plus then there is group of partners that we just showed that really support in its financially and um with network um who, who have an interest in getting those innovative start ups really growing faster because they have, for instance, they are interested as investors or they are interested um as collaboration partners.

So it's really plus, of course, we, if it comes to academic mentors. Uh that's the huge um and rich academic landscape in Vienna that we also um are able to use if it comes to really reaching out to, you know, checking out whether this is really high end technology or not.

Great. Awesome. Well, that, that's really great. And um the people do you, when you recruit your start ups, do they have to be in Vienna themselves or can they come from anywhere else?

Yeah, that's a very, very good question. Um um If it comes to our core program, the incubation program on a very early stage there, this is supported by pub public money. Um And that's the reason why the start ups should have the aim or should be incorporated in Vienna. Um Because it's supported by money from the city of Vienna as well as the National Ministry Funds. Um So that's a public funding instrument. Um because there is um there is a market failure in that domain at that very early stage. Um If it comes to health, at the end that the start ups really come from everywhere in the world. Um And because there the purpose is to really, you know, get those innovations that are out there that somebody has developed already to the patient and into the hospitals and to the doctors. So there we work with start ups. Um Just to give you one example, the last health hub Vienna um uh link up was uh 15 presentations of start ups from, from 30 nations all across Europe, South Africa, United States and Israel. Um So there and we also have developed a database that detects so to speak an artificial intelligence that detect these kinds of starts that we are looking for.

We call them corporate ready because what, what the corporate partners are interested in is ready to collaborate start ups um and not too early stage which are still in technological

development. Cool, nice. I see. That's a very interesting question from.

Um So let me just read it. Is there a group of ancient investors work that focuses on funding female at start ups? If yes, are the approaches discovering the right founders and start ups? Um Yes, there is um there is a, a um investor in then.com is really a group of, of female investors who is not only investing in start ups but also in start ups um that I co founded in 2013 already. Um We meet on a regular basis. Um um And um you know, every, every other month, discuss cases together et cetera. So that's really um a focus um including female founders. Yeah, there's not and never 100% only female founders. Um Yet there is an acceleration program with focusing on female founders only. Um And that's called female founders is really also a with a global intention and they are also uh international start ups. Female founders are welcome to join the program and the purpose. There is also kind of train to train existing established big organizations also um in terms of how to recruit more female talent. Um So it's a kind of a bi bilateral program. Um The start ups really get a lot of support um um as they come to Vienna, at least for the period of time of the of the program.

Um And there is another Angel Investors Association that is even older than invest.com um is um but that's all gender group of angel investors that is also growing at an enormous speed um in Austria with a lot of male um investors also looking specifically for female um founders because a lot of data show us that the start ups are more successful.

Um on average. Thank you. What are you doing? Can I ask a question back?

So I am a female founder for tech solution called Mentor Jam and we provide um a mentoring solution for accelerators incubators and for companies. So any company or organization who run large scale mentoring programs or communities, we help them with their infrastructure. So we're a technology partner

for such companies. So we could go on chatting to each other, we can continue chatting, we're continuously looking to improve our program um the efficiency. So if it's really digitizing the mentoring program that um I'd be definitely interested in,

there you go. Thank you. I will find you on linkedin.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we can also make him a session um here now on hopping also. Um um I can, I will reach out to you and, and offer um Maybe we find a common date otherwise we'll just meet on linkedin and make something else.

That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much for the session. I love hearing about your program.

Yeah. Thank you very much for the feedback and thanks everybody for being with me. Um And I hope you learned something. I think the session will end um automatically. Um Thank you, Anna for the good feedback. Yeah. Um If you, as long as we have the chance, somebody else can still still ask a question or also ask for being put on the stage just like Estelle. Um uh the question whether people have to live in Vienna? No, they don't have to live the start up. You know, the start ups don't even need to have their technology from Vienna. You have quite a number of start ups that have incorporated the business in Vienna, but the technology came from the charity in Berlin or the Pasteur Institute in France or the University of Technology in Tallinn. Um The people live in Vienna or around Vienna, I would say. Um but there is quite a couple of our start ups that have distributed teams also um for instance, programmers in, in the Arabic region or Ukraine um et cetera. So this is for the early stage uh program and of course, the Alta Vienna starts, they sit every everywhere in the world and in 2020 or from 2020 on, they wouldn't even come to Vienna for the program, but it was driven all digitally as, as we ran.

Um and did not cancel anything. I will share my linkedin profile. That's a very good idea. Um Oops,

I've just sent you a message. Thank you.

El I shared my linkedin profile already already at the main chat. Um But that's a very good idea to do it again here. Any other questions? If not, so I'll still stay around as long as the session is, is not closed automatically, which I could, would think that could happen. Um So if you want to still have a question, ask me anything, also ask for, for uh sharing, sharing um the, the mic and the video so we can have this conversation just like still there is one question again in the chat uh concerning uh challenges of female tech entrepreneurs in Austria.

Um But uh we discussed it on the angel investor side. Maybe I, I add um what I think Austria is relatively conservative as compared to other regions. Um For instance, Asia, I think Austria is very persistent in gender gap in general. Um So um sometimes that's something which, which um um entrepreneurs, female tech entrepreneurs also face here in Austria, for instance, um that the numbers of students starting a study of informatics um was already one third. Um now has dropped a little bit. Um So I, I think this is also 11, one issue that female entrepreneurs, but also male entrepreneurs really face um is access to talent that is growing more diverse. But um my gut feeling unfortunately, to be honest is that Austria grows more diverse, slower than other regions.

Um But the entrepreneurship side, yeah. So in comparison, um to other European cities, Vienna is really top if it comes to female entrepreneurs and I think that's the the offer of the programs um that are around. Um And the long standing focus on on this um question also to foster female entrepreneurship in particular, if you one, you can also share um share your own um uh linkedin profile also um to connect and then take the conversation into either a chat on linkedin or even better here on, on uh on hop in where you can also reach out to me and ask for direct sessions, bilateral sessions, which is supported here on hopin also.

All right, if there is no more questions, let's end the session. I was really, really happy to have you all here. Um And looking forward to meeting you in one of the bilateral meetings, just reach out to me via hopping. Um I'll be around also during the entire conference. Um Not always of course, but um feel free to reach out to me. Thank you very much.