During the opening plenary session of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held at Stanford University, U.S. entrepreneurial government leaders and startup founders from around the world gathered to celebrate and support youth and women entrepreneurs as part of the invite-only GES+ Emerging Youth and Women Entrepreneurs forum.
For the GES+ forum, organized by the Global Entrepreneurship Network and the U.S. State Department, more than 150 entrepreneurs, representing 70 different countries, had the opportunity to gain pitch skills and attend master classes, as well as network with global investors and receive invaluable mentorship.
Participants on the plenary discussion panel tackled entrepreneurial issues – from challenges to obtaining seed dollars, to overcoming gender equality barriers – as part of the opening of the GES+ Emerging Youth and Women Entrepreneurs forum.
The moderator, Brad Stone, is an author and journalist who has covered entrepreneurship for Bloomberg West, and led the panel of entrepreneurs, who included Oren Yakobovich, founder of Videre; Leila Janah, founder of Sama and Laxmi; and Ooshma Garg, founder of Gobble.
The discussion focused on both the challenges and positives of being an entrepreneur and creating a new business, and covered the changing, yet still difficult environment for women in entrepreneurship.
Janah addressed the issue of developing a family and professional life, and how this is still a challenge for many women entrepreneurs.
“I think it is especially difficult because women in prime reproductive years happens to coincide with our prime professional productivity years,” she said, mentioning that not every woman works for an organization that offers opportunities to preserve their fertility. “It’s a really challenging thing to face.”
She said she believes it is important for women – and all entrepreneurs – to realistically face challenges, and sometimes sacrifices, it takes to create and run a successful enterprise. There are many rewards, she said, but that it’s still important to understand what it takes to be a founder.
“Should [entrepreneurship] be difficult? Yes,” said Garg. “Because only from great, great, great, great pressure comes the diamond.”
She said the challenges she overcomes strengthens her company and illustrated how issues with investing helped her re-evaluate her strategy and product, leading her to do additional research on her customer base.
Yakobovich said it’s important for entrepreneurs to stay true in the face of investment obstacles, demands on time and challenges to core mission and values
“Do not to loose your core values,” he said. “An investor may so if you just do this, or change that, I will give you investment. It is close to what you do, but not really. It’s not going to go where you want it to go, but you need the money. It’s so tempting to get there.
“You can go far, but you have to remember it.”
Richard Stengel, U.S. Under Secretary for Diplomacy and Public Affairs, welcomed participants to the GES+ event, and facilitated startup stories from a variety of global founders. Catherine Russell, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, discussed the importance of addressing youth and women entrepreneurial issues.
The GES+ forum focused on empowering youth and women entrepreneurs to bring new ideas to life while also investing in the collective future. Youth entrepreneurs are the future of the global economy. As digital natives and the most technologically empowered generation the world has ever seen, developing innovative solutions to complex problems is second nature to these young business minds.