I had never seen such a thing. In many years that I deal with innovation this has never happened to me to see so many women ready to launch a tech startup to improve the world.
Startups are a male world, not only in Italy, but also in Silicon Valley, where all large groups have men as founders and leaders. As if technology had decided to exclude women, or as if women had not entered that championship. A waste of talent that is even more pronounced in Italy. Yup, there were startups led by women, but they were exceptions. You had a good idea that at sector events there were (there are) too many males on stage: the opposite was complicated.
A few months ago a research showed that female-led startups in Italy are one in 10. And even in teams they are usually relegated to marginal roles: communication, marketing. For years we have been saying that things should change and maybe they are changing. Or so it seemed to me the other day in Milan, in a futuristic center of the Polytechnic that deals with technology transfer to companies (Made, all brand new, beautiful) where there was the final of Switch2Product of PoliHub, with the best startups of the year: over 200 applications, skimmed gradually to arrive at 25 ideas and teams ready to go. And among these there were many women.
I mention them, because they deserve it: Erica Mosca, who designs a platform to create inclusive environments accessible to all (Includ); Camilla Conti, which is developing a tool to redefine the measurements for decarbonization (Nice-T); Eleonora Bruschi, who proposes to improve the seismic resilience of buildings (Aida); Francesca Condorelli, who is developing software to automate the survey in architectural projects (Archygram); Sonia Peggiani, which is studying new labels made of carbon nanostructures to combat counterfeiters (Enigma); Cristina Tedeschi, who aims to transform asbestos into a resource (iMiA); and the French Aurelie Marie Glaser, which is creating a device to improve respiratory capacity (Eolo). They are visionary, ambitious, complex projects. And they are the signal that something is changing.
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