Women in Cleantech & Sustainability is bringing the first pitch competition focused on female-led cleantech and sustainability startups in the United States to Google’s Sunnyvale campus next month to pitch venture capitalists and investors.
The pitch competition will happen as part of the 5th Annual WCS Talks 2018 on November 3rd, 2018 to put a spotlight on women-led cleantech and sustainability companies kicking tail around the world.
CEOs from SINAI Technologies, Simusolar, Deep Isolation, TotalCtrl, NuLeaf Tech and Artveoli will pitch their companies and field questions from a panel of judges from Centrica Innovations, G2VP, Energy Impact Partners, and the Urban Innovation Fund.
“The women leading these startups are tackling some of the big challenges the green economy faces in the coming years, and ones we see commonly ignored by other companies,” says Lisa Ann Pinkerton, founder and chairwoman at Women in Cleantech and Sustainability. “While people of both genders are focused on mitigating the most devastating effects of climate change, we still see women entrepreneurs woefully underrepresented in this space. Our aim with the competition is to highlight the great work these women are doing and encourage others to found startups themselves.”
The competition serves to celebrate some of the great women-led companies in the cleantech space while also dropping them into the fire to test their mettle in a pitch competition where they will compete for a slew of prizes. The winner of the competition will receive a lump of prizes to support the continued growth of their business, including a guaranteed spot to pitch at SVForum’s 2019 Women in Tech Festival and preferential consideration to serve on a Cleantech Forum San Francisco panel, among other prizes.
“A growing body of research indicates companies with women in leadership roles produce slightly higher returns on assets and capital, as well as higher average growth rates,” Lidiya Dervisheva, investor at G2VP, a spin off from Kleiner Perkins’ Green Growth Fund. “Yet, the VC database PitchBook reveals women-led startups only garnered 2.2 percent of the $85 billion in funding distributed to the startup community in 2017. In the 21st Century, we get a chance to change this gender disparity together and that’s why I’m looking forward to serving as a judge in the competition.”
The underrepresentation of women in not just cleantech, but in the world of venture capital, highlights just how much the world is missing out on by not investing more in women-led companies. WCS Talks exists to put a spotlight on women’s unique views on leadership, business, policy and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics.
It aims to highlight the substantial and positive impact that women are making in these fields as they relate to environmental topics, while providing a platform to address challenges women still face in their professions.
The WCS Talks pitch competition will take place between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. PST on November 3, 2018, as a part of the larger TED-style conference, which features speakers from Google, First Solar, ENGIE, EDF, Bloom Energy, the Presidio School, OSIsoft and more. Winners will be selected by votes tallied from the judges and the WCS Talks audience.
Learn more about the pitch competition here. To purchase tickets to WCS Talks 2018 click here.
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Former Tesla Battery Expert Leading Lyten Into New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Era — Podcast:
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
