International Women's Day - it's time to count her in
Small Steps Vol. 95: Top tips for edtech founders from a serial impact entrepreneur 📚; practical resources for fixing your gender pay gap 💰; and putting a price on nature 🌳.
Kick start
👩🏽 Tomorrow is International Women’s Day (IWD) and the theme is Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress. This topic is more timely than ever in the context of the recent startup funding gap statistics showing that only 4% of capital was invested in all-women founding teams.
In addition, the national gender pay gap data released last week showed that there is a 21.7% pay gap between the median woman and median man’s pay, meaning that on average for every $1 a man makes, a woman earns 78c, adding up to women being worse off by over $26,000 per year. The data shows that most businesses are not doing enough to support their women employees, with only 30% of employers keeping their median gender pay gap between the target range of -5% and +5%. Representation in senior leadership is an ongoing issue, with 26% of boards having no women representatives despite women making up 51% of the workforce. These statistics also do not take into account intersectionality and the compounding discrimination that women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds face.
You can check out interactive datasets to find where different companies rank here and here.
While IWD is an important day to highlight these issues, it’s essential to be taking action year-round.
So, if you’re not sure where to start, here are some practical resources that can help you and your workplace take action:
📋 Step-by-step advice on how to fix your workplace’s pay gap - checklist here
✏️ Draft equity and inclusion policies (e.g. flexible working) that you can implement here
✅ Prove that your company is committed to progress and attract more women to your team by getting endorsed!
❤️🔥 Another hot recommendation for IWD? Recognising that this is a deeply structural issue, we need to start early – including with high-quality financial education for girls and young women.
HEX has launched a fantastic leadership series with the Academy for Enterprising Girls - a series of free events for young women aged 16 to 18 years, including immersive career exploration workshops and financial literacy training. Tailored for bold school leavers (Years 10 to 12), send this to a young woman in your life to help her deep dive into an understanding of who she is, what she wants to do with her career, and how to share it with the world.
What we’re thinking about
📚 From idea to impact: lessons for edtech founders with Aaron Tait.
The past 15 years as a repeat impact entrepreneur have taught Aaron Tait more than a few things about how to succeed as a startup founder. Having co-founded the impactful companies EC.inc, Spark International and ygap, he has seen up close what it takes to create impact at scale – from inception to exit.
We sat down with Aaron and asked him for the advice he wished he’d known when he was starting out as an edtech founder – including how to navigate edtech sales, how to create rapidly scalable impact in tandem with profits, and the strategy that led to EC.inc’s successful exit.
Check it out here - as well as Aaron’s new book on impact entrepreneurship that launched this week!
New paths
♻️ Circular Ventures is on the hunt for a Circular Ventures Analyst (Melbourne).
🔥 Want to work for an impact company? Fill out our expression of interest form for roles across our portfolio. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
💸 The WORK180 team featured on the ABC regarding their work and data on the gender pay gap in Australia and what companies can do about it.
🐛 Olympia Yarger from Goterra featured on the Innovation Bay Podcast, talking about Goterra’s growth, mental health, and the state of Australian startup funding.
📢 Our Managing Partner Will Richardson was quoted off the back of our submission to the Federal Government regarding changes to the rules for sophisticated investors.
For the road
🌳 Putting a price on nature. In Eating the Earth, Justyn Walsh tells us that “capitalism … is still anchored to a past in which human-made capital was scarce and natural capital was plentiful.” He argues that this has resulted in an economic system where damage to the natural world is left largely uncounted, and the real wealth – natural capital -- is being destroyed.
We’re loving Wedgetail’s Nature Notes which expand on this idea in a great three-part series, asking how to incorporate nature into the economy so that we can flip the current narrative – in which drinkable water and breathable air are currently valued less than paper and biowaste. Want to learn more about how to account for nature? There’s a self-guided course for that.
🏃♀️ Moderation is key. If you took an overseas holiday every month, you’d probably start to enjoy it less each time. It’s a simple psychological hack, but as The Guardian explains, studies have shown that we get more enjoyment out of an activity we like if we only do it occasionally. As things become a habit, we tend to enjoy them less – but the opposite is true for activities we don’t enjoy. Interesting.
📈 Busting the ‘hyper-growth’ myth. Turns out, even the fastest growing products are growing at a quadratic pace, not an exponential one. As The VentureCrew explains, this means they are growing by adding a constant to their user-count as opposed to exponential growth – so even with the best laid marketing plans, growth eventually tails off. This explains why even the most viral companies will need to eventually launch new products if they want to maintain this pace and trajectory.
🌏 Climate vulnerability and social inequality. Depending on where you live in Australia, you are going to be subjected to an increasing number of natural disasters due to climate change. University of Melbourne has mapped this phenomenon, juxtaposing it against an existing lack of access to social services in some areas of Australia.
😭 Don’t shed a tear for Apple’s new Vision Pro. Wired’s Lauren Goode set out on a mission: Watch sad movies to try and cry while wearing Apple’s new Vision Pro. What she learned is that the device handles tears somewhat well, but things get kinda gross in the process. She also has bad news for people who like to eat or drink while watching TV – the Vision Pro doesn’t work so well for consuming content and food at the same time.
🫀 How hope led to the world’s first artificial heart. When Daniel Timms’ father was dying of heart failure, he put his design expertise to use creating a titanium-based replacement heart, with a prototype made of parts from Bunnings. Building a business around his innovation, he’s now placed Australia at the front of the world in a race to create a replacement for the heart.
🇹🇻 Climate change is closing in on Tuvalu. The island nation with a population of 11,000, and the 4th smallest country in the world, is seeing its beaches disappear before their eyes. As each annual king tide erodes more of the island, its leaders and activists are in a race to secure both international recognition and attention for the very real and very urgent adaptation and mitigation challenges the country is facing.
🤑 Grants, grants, grants. LaunchVic has launched a raft of grants aimed at both accelerators and startups for 2024. They include: A $400,000 grant for pre-accelerator programs, a $300,000 grant for specialised angel networks and a $50,000 match funding grant for medtech startups. Most are holding information sessions in March, with applications closing in April. Check out LaunchVic’s grant page to learn more.
🎯 A new model for fund management. The impact trend is moving into more segments of the finance industry. Future Business Partnership charges its clients a 2% management fee and a performance fee of up to 20% of profits, but only if the company demonstrates measurable improvements in environmental impact as well as financial gain — with an independent impact assessment.
⭐ Accelerating women founders. The SBE Evolve program is now taking applications for ambitious women founders to scale their business through an intensive 8-week program. By the end of the program, you’ll be investor-ready – so sign up now!
🥡 We’re picking up traces of plastics in human placenta. Think plastics are only ending up in landfill or the ocean? Think again. A study from the University of New Mexico found that microplastics are present in the placenta of every mammal on the planet. Wow. They haven’t been able to properly link it yet, but researchers are drawing threads between this phenomenon and declining global sperm counts and increasing levels of colon cancer.
Here’s a meme to offset that heavy news.
Source here.
Save the date
📅 March 10: EnergyLab’s Climate Solutions Accelerator closes applications. Successful climate tech companies can earn up to $100,000 funding for building your business, the opportunity for warm intros to investors and gain access to a network of over 300 mentors.
📅 March 11: Applications close for the LuminaX HealthTech Accelerator Program. If you are a startup using technology to solve a problem in health, check it out. Apply here.
📅 March 22 - 24: Techstars Sydney Startup Weekend! Do you want to build your innovation toolkit and learn how to think more creatively? Do you want to upskill so you’re better positioned to solve problems and make a difference? If so, Techstars Startup Weekend is the place for you! Join us for a fun weekend in March!