Impulse4women has been recognized as one of the 20 Fastest Growing Companies to Work in 2021 by The Executive Headlines

Meet the leader behind the success of Impulse4women

Taryn Andersen - After working in private banking for over 13 years, in 2011, she created Pluribus United Foundations along with 15 private foundations in order to create synergies between them. She decided to quit banking in favour of entrepreneurship. Since then she has worked as a mentor for Startup-Bootcamp, and been the Investor Relations Director at THCAP Venture Capital since 2016. Through combining her passion for entrepreneurship with investment, and recognising the difficulties female business leaders face in accessing investment, she co-founded Impulse4women.
 

Let’s accentuate the interview between Taryn Andersen and The Executive Headlines:-

 

What inspired you to establish Impulse4women? Please Brief us about Impulse4women.

I started to see a gap in how males and females accessed investment. We wanted to bring the female lead tech projects and social impact startups to investors in order to increase their investment. We want investors to have a place to find female lead tech startups from all life stages; MVP to IPO, and from different sectors, maturities and locations. Most of our startups fall into the following sectors: health, foodtech, agrotech, watertech, circular economy, fashiontech etc.

What is the most important key to your success? Share the experience.

From the investors perspective, we are supporting the startups and informing them about what investors are looking for in order to give them knowledge to understand how we work, our strategies, the investment process in order to make them successful when they begin fundraising. All of the questions we ask when they register in our platform are necessary to know before seeing investors
 

Tell us about your Robust Product Offerings?

We offer a huge database with different projects and are positioned globally, giving our startups the opportunity to be seen by investors all over the world as long as they fit the criteria. During Covid-19, we began to offer different tools to help the startups grow (mentoring sessions, pitching sessions, webinars, podcasts). The most valuable thing is the team and our advisors who have been supporting us with their time and knowledge. We have around 75, half of them being experts as investors in their field, and have business angels, venture capitalists, private equity and social impact funds. The other half are ambassadors, particularly females, who want to support the female entrepreneurial technology ecosystem in their geographical spheres.

What are the biggest challenges you faced in the initial years?

The original goal was to start in Spain, but there were not enough female entrepreneurs so we extended to Europe. Then we expanded to the USA and Canada. The first challenge was closing agreements with public and private international organisations that wanted to increase the quota of women-led entrepreneurs and make connections by contributing as a third party.

The second challenge was working with software developers so that we had a platform that was able to effectively support what we wanted to do.

The third challenge in the initial phase was that there were not many companies supporting female leaders or social impact projects. Now, it is an area that is growing, but our add value is that we are a niche focused on increasing their investment. We need to make ourselves known and be more visible and that is one of Impulse4women’s aims, to increase female entrepreneurs visibility in business.
 

What do you feel are the reasons behind your company's reputation?

First of all, we have built ourselves from the investors perspective, given the fact our board and ambassadors belong to the ecosystem, and they ensure the quality of the services we offer. In addition, we have been working with international public and private institutions, helping them as a third party since 2017.

What's so different about Impulse4women and why one should opt for it?

At Impulse4women, we really care about the success of female entrepreneurs. We offer a free service to startups providing networking opportunities with top investors, Venture Capitals, Business Angels and industry experts. Alongside this, our events, mentoring and pitching sessions are designed to prepare startups in our platform for investment rounds and enable their development.
We will reach 1460 investors by 2022, who will be available for connections with startups in our ecosystem.

How was it working through the pandemic? How challenging was it for you?

Impulse4Women has navigated the challenges of the pandemic by transitioning from having an only offline model to being able to move our business online. Therefore, despite the fact we did not receive sponsorship due to the pandemic that we would have needed for offline events, by moving online, we were able to massively reduce our costs. Since we also operate globally, we have successfully managed to maintain an online presence and even expand and grow during this time.

How is Impulse4women helping users by providing an end-to-end service.

We operate both online and offline, offering Webinar Sessions, Podcasts, Mentoring Sessions, Pitching Sessions, Online and Offline Events, Grants communications, Job Demand-Offer in order to support start-ups in every life stage. Our platform has 6,000+ startups led by female entrepreneurs in the technology sector and social impact projects, and we are in contact with 5,000 European startups, arriving in the short to medium term at 11,000 startups. We support startups from every life stage (from the beginning until the exit), sector, maturity and geographical location with the tools they need to grow their businesses and successfully find investment. Access to the platform is free for startups, as long as they are updating their proposal to remain attractive to investors. For 2022, we are preparing academic courses for females aspiring to become investors, which will be provided through our website, with more courses being added in the near future.

What is the USP of your company? What makes Impulse4women different from its competition?

By starting in 2017, we did not have competition. Now, we have a global reach unlike other matchmaking platforms that have surfaced in the meantime. We specifically support female tech entrepreneurs and social impact projects (regardless of gender) to increase investment. We offer our services for free to startups so that they can focus their budget on growing and ensuring success whilst also benefiting from the opportunities that we offer.

Where do you see Impulse4women in the next 3-5 years?

As we are growing more and more, and due to the fact we are seeing greater numbers of female entrepreneurs in technology, we are experiencing exponential growth in the industry. The world is experiencing a technological revolution. We are aiming to grow our platform on both sides so we have an even more diverse platform of startups and investors in order to improve success rates.

Is there any specific message or product that you would like to highlight through this article?

Our knowledge comes from an investment background, and our mission is to elevate investment in female tech entrepreneurs and social impact projects. In the future, we would like to bring more female lead tech investors into the platform. IN doing so, we can learn about what kinds of projects and processes appeal to them from a non-financial perspective, enabling a platform that encourages women supporting women.
 

What are your messages for budding entrepreneurs/young generation?

Especially when launching a startup, if you make a strategic mistake, it could take 3-9 months to detect, act on and resolve. This is valuable time lost in going to market, missing out on the market niche, and creates the possibility of losing out to competitors. The solution is to have a mentor, and to connect and interact with investors to benefit from their advice.
 

Impulse4women are here to support you and help you to increase your investment!