Since the fund was announced it has been celebrated by many on social media, with entrepreneurs and investors alike arguing its timely launch can play a key role in helping Europe strengthen its tech ecosystem at a time when the US appears to be less favourable to transatlantic cooperation.
But there’s also been a strong backlash against the lack of diversity in the project.
This led to some heated discussions about how the gender balance might likely influence the selection of young founders for the project.
"So where do you think the majority of that money is going to go – if it’s backed by and deployed by majority men? And where will the returns flow?", asked Sophie Winwood, cofounder and CEO of British venture capital company Unlock VC, in a post highlighting what she described as the fund’s “diversity blindspot”.
I don't want to spend huge amounts of time defending ourselves
Project Europe’s CEO, Kitty Mayo, reveals in an exclusive interview with Impact Loop that her inbox has been overflowing since the fund’s launch. "I could fill my diary for the next three weeks explaining myself," says the UK-based manager. While acknowledging the current gender imbalance is "obviously not ideal," Mayo emphasises there are plans to address it, and doesn’t want the backlash to overshadow her new role, which officially begins next week.
"I don't want to spend huge amounts of time defending ourselves preemptively," says Mayo. "The proof will be in the pudding," she adds. The CEO insists the fund is developing strategies to ensure that founders of all genders are selected, as well as those from other underrepresented groups.
So far, more than 120 European founders have joined together to create the initiative. These include tech glitterati such as Mati Staniszewski, CEO of leading AI and speech synthesis company ElevenLabs (based in the UK), Rina Onur Sirinoglu, CEO of mobile game development studio Spyke Games (based in Turkey), and Swedes Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of fintech giant Klarna, and Fredrik Hjelm, CEO of electric scooter rental firm Voi.
Mayo herself has spent the last few years in senior roles at Entrepreneur First, an international organisation that helps find and invest in new founders. She says much of her time there was spent "proactively" seeking out potential female founders at universities, and she plans to do the same at Project Europe, since, she believes, women can have a tendency not to put themselves forward as either entrepreneurs or investors.
Seventeen female investors
Since the launch of Project Europe, Mayo says the online conversations about its lack of diversity have, conversely, led to numerous founders and investors (both male and female) contacting her to offer their support. The project now has sixteen committed women investors.
"So many people have reached out to say, 'how can we help?'. We've had a huge number of women reach out …wanting to invest," says the CEO. She adds that she’s confident the project will "evolve and it will grow" to address the current gender representation imbalance.
I was ridiculously excited because it's the work I love most
A former French teacher and ski instructor before joining Entrepreneur First in 2019, Mayo says she was recruited "out-of-the-blue" two months ago. She was approached directly by Harry Stebbings, the British podcaster-turned-VC who is one of the leading figures behind the new project. Stebbings has been called out for a lack of women representation on his podcast, but Mayo says she can’t wait to work alongside him.
"When Harry called me up to suggest that it was a role for me, I was ridiculously excited because it's the work I love most… I want to work with early stage talent," she says. "I want to help people build things from the ground up from the very, very, very early stage."
Not just for university students
Mayo also defends the fund’s decision to focus on under 25s, which some critics have argued is too narrow an age range. She says the decision was made because "there are lots of options for people over 25 already", and entrepreneurs who are still studying or coming straight out of university need a different kind of support to founders who have already established themselves in the working world.
In addition, Mayo says Project Europe also intends to put resources into sourcing new founders who have not completed higher education, as part of its efforts to champion diversity. “Universities are easy to target because you have classes of smart people working together and they sort of self-organise to a certain degree,” she explains. However she hopes that “word-of-mouth” and the recent wave of publicity around the new Project Europe fund will encourage “highly ambitious people who don't necessarily fit the mould” to put themselves forward too.
"No prior education/funding necessary," reads the manifesto on Project Europe’s website.
A potential boost for Europe's impact sector
Although Project Europe is, Mayo says "totally agnostic" when it comes to the kinds of companies it plans to work with, she predicts that a large proportion of young founders helped by the fund will come from the impact sector.
"Our focus is more on people solving hard problems with sort of elegant and technical solutions…[but] I imagine that a huge focus there will be on people who are building impactful and sustainable businesses," she argues. "Many of the most ambitious early stage founders gravitate around climate focused or impact focused movements."
