MVPs and Female Founders

With about one more week to go before the first meeting of Frankfurt Women in Fintech, I am sitting in the last few hours of my EMBA class where we are talking (animatedly) about startups, innovation, and actually getting your startup (whatever it is) off the ground.

Our class is almost half women (40%), and as a class we are reaching the end of formal instruction before we split apart to work on business plans, thesis projects or consulting ideas. What is fascinating to me (and wonderful actually) is how confident the women here are - a year after we all met, and as many of us are putting together or part of startup teams. There is interest and respect and a dynamism that exists between class members, no matter what our age or gender, in ideas that cross all of these differences as well as others.

It is one of those feelings I would like to start exporting into the fledgling FWIF group I would like to see develop wings and fly.

The motivation to start something new is a kind of flow that creates creativity which steps outside of boundaries - including in business. It is brains and experience, not externals that count.

Starting or participating in a group like FWIF, is not, as a couple of classmates said to me yesterday, a way to create a "woman only" group. Rather it is finding a way to allow new voices (both women and men), as well as creating new mixes of talent into an existing stream - to create innovation in new forms.

Hope to see you all there.