Are you ready to scale?

There is a huge amount of discussion right now, and also speculation, around why so few women entrepreneurs around the world manage to scale their businesses - and this challenge is also pronounced here on the African continent. It seems that under-investment in women owned businesses is a common complaint when talking to women entrepreneurs anywhere in the world. So, why is that? Well, it’s a number of factors. It’s a long standing record of VCs opting not to invest in women owned businesses in larger numbers, for whatever the combination of reasons. It’s the fact that there are not enough VCs who are women and who might take a more proactive gender lens to their investment decisions. It could be that women entrepreneurs are not more aggressively going out there to encourage external investment in their businesses. And, it could be that women entrepreneurs are simply not preparing their businesses to scale from the outset. Whatever the reasons, the bottom line is that there is a growing interest in seeing women entrepreneurs scaling and providing high impact business solutions to key socio economic challenges in their countries and communities. And, there are a growing number of gender lens funds and VCs who are on the look out for the next great investment. The trick is to go out there and pitch those businesses, having made very sure that your business is indeed ready to scale.