West Tech Women Event
This morning I was lucky enough to get along to West Tech Women which was the kick-off session for the week long West Tech Fest.
West Tech Fest is Australia’s longest running tech and innovation festival providing opportunities for the local startup and tech community to connect, share insights and grow a successful business.
It had a stellar line-up kicking off a beautiful welcome to country by Freda Ogilvie. If you are from outside of Australia - welcome to country is a traditional Aboriginal ceremony where you are welcomed to the land - Aboriginal land. It’s always a pleasure to hear, and warms your heart with the generosity that first nations people so passionately gift us with.
Danella Cross hosting the event, speakers including Professor Melinda Fitzgerald, Hon. Sue Ellery - Minister for Finance, Commerce and Women’s Interests and Maaike Doyer from Epic Angels.
The reason I specifically wanted to attend is because I wanted to learn more about Women investors. As a complete newbie in this field, I am keen to invest, but I wanted to learn more about this in a comfortable setting.
Maaike Doyer from Epic Angels gave us a brilliant talk, which was humorous and personable and really touched on the concerns and hesitation about investing money. I loved the concept of what she has built with Epic Angels, Designed by Women for Women.
Epic Angels is the largest global female only investment collective in Asia Pacific. Epic Angels is based in Singapore which has the highest percentage of female CEO’s. We got to see a snippet of a new film coming out called Show her the money see the trailer here which looks incredible. In the film it talked about how any money that is invested, the returns are better when you invest in women.
The key takeaways from Maaike’s talk was:-
People think they need to be educated in investing, you don’t.
Just trust your gut and start small
What change do you want to see? Invest your money there
Then we had Jeanette Cheah who is the Co-Founder of Hex. Hex is a Youth Business Entrepreneurial Program. Jeanette talked about visibility, why it matters and how you choose to define how you want to show up.
Jeanette’s main points:-
Be visible for yourself
Be visible for your inner circle
Be visible to amplify your impact
Be visible for the girl you haven’t met and probably never will
Be visible because the world needs to hear you unique voice
Be visible to pay it forward
Lastly we had a panel discussion hosted by Banu Kannu from WITWA. On the panel was Tracie Clark from Venture HQ, Serena Grant from Minderoo Foundation, Jess Walker from Airtree, Garry Williams from Tractor Ventures, and Jaynaya Winmar from Blak Angels.
So many topics were discussed about backing Indigenous businesses, how to pitch to investors and the strategy behind that, challenging your bias and assumptions when investing, as well as diversifying your investments for a better return.
It was a power packed session, I loved it. I am now totally hooked on making my first investment, and I hope this blog post encourages you to think about how you can make your first step to investing, and if you are already investing, let me know, I would love to discuss.
We need more women at the top, on boards and investing. I’m sure the rest of West Tech Fest will be amazing after that flying start.