Julia Wadehn was pregnant when she was looking for investors for her startup. She says: Mothers who start a business are more resilient and determined than other founders.
There are few women who start a business. And even fewer who are pregnant at the same time. Julia Wadehn from the energy startup Novo, which helps to make buildings more energy-efficient, belongs to this rare breed. She and her co-founder’s partner gave birth to their child on exactly the same day. In addition to joy, this also brought with it fears: How would investors react to this? After all, there are prejudices in the scene that female founders lose focus after the birth and focus more on the child than on their own company.
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The founding scene recently spoke to Wadehn about this. She says women and mothers have it harder than their male counterparts. Now we have had the founder speak very personally in the podcast “So geht Startup”. There, Wadehn tells how she found out about her pregnancy in the middle of a fundraising phase – and she feared being written off by investors. The founder got the money, but as a man she probably would have had it easier.
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Wadehn also talks about the very personal problems she had as a pregnant founder. About frustration and desperation in financial matters and lack of support from the state. To date, she has not received any parental allowance.
“Female founders have overcome more”
And maybe that’s exactly why Wadehn supports the thesis that female founders with children are anything but weak and not very ambitious. On the contrary: if you have children, you show a good deal of resilience and determination, according to the founder.
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So if you want to work with the strongest founders, you should look at female founders, says Wadehn. “Because they have usually overcome more before they even started their own business,” says the founder in the podcast. If they then also decide to have children, “then they do so with a plan and very consciously, because they simply know exactly how to deal with difficulties”.
In the current episode of “So geht Startup” you will also hear how the Novo founder was driven to the brink of despair when she applied for maternity benefit and how she keeps her head above water financially without parental benefit. She also gives tips on what the self-employed should definitely consider if they want to start a family.