The Women's Forum launches its call for applications for 40 women entrepreneurs

If their number is growing – slowly –, women entrepreneurs still have difficulty, even when their model “performs”, in accessing the financing that would allow them to scale up.

Hence the urgency to change the situation.

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Madame Figaro.– What prompted BNP Paribas to launch this FWE40 list?

We talk all the time about the Next 40, these 40 French tech companies most likely to “scale” (achieve hypergrowth) and become unicorns, world-class leaders.

Among them, none is headed by a woman.

This is why, with the Women's Forum, we had the idea of ​​creating the French Women Entrepreneurs 40, a list placed under the high patronage of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, to shed more light on creative women. of companies.

They will be divided into three categories: twenty founders of start-ups and very small enterprises (TPE), fifteen managers of SMEs (turnover between 10 and 50 million euros) and five women at the head of companies. of intermediate size (ETI) (number of

business over 50 million euros).

The selected candidates will benefit, for one year, from dedicated support offered by the partners (BpiFrance, HEC, EcoVadis and Be A Boss).

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How to apply?

It's very simple: if you have founded or co-founded a company for more than 3 years, domiciled in France, and you meet the growth criteria for your category, you can send your application online until midnight September 12 on our website *.

The selection will review the results of the company of course, but also the management team and its complementarity, the degree of maturity of the project on ESG (environmental, social and governance) subjects.

The winners will be announced on November 29 at the Women's Forum in Paris.

For women-led start-ups to become unicorns, they need to have broader access to fundraising.

This fight remains the sinews of war?

Unfortunately yes.

If we add to these companies those with mixed management, the whole represents only 24% of fundraising in France, the amounts of which remain very low.

This is why since 2019, we have made a commitment with BNP Paribas Development to devote at least 10% of our new investments each year to projects founded or co-founded by women.

Signatories of the SISTA charter and the France Invest charter on the financing of start-ups, we want to reach 25% by 2025.

What should be done to make things move faster?

It's a question of pedagogy – it takes a long time to change a culture!

We need more parity in the investment teams – we know the cognitive bias which consists in investing in the first place in what resembles us.

Studies like McKinsey's, which show that a business run by a woman, when she manages to raise funds, “overperforms”, also matter a lot.

We also support the initiatives launched by SISTA, of which BNP Paribas is a partner, in particular through the SISTA Entrepreneures program.

These initiatives are intended to support and facilitate investment in businesses created by women.

For a double impact, economic and societal!

*fwe40.com