Innovation Women - the startup that connects event managers with female speakers who have entrepreneurship and tech backgrounds - is representing Boston in the Tech.Co’s SXSW Startup of the Year Competition. The company strives to give accomplished women the PR they deserve while allowing people to put on gender-balanced conferences and panel discussions. And now, it will be the only New England-based venture coming that’s made it to the next round of the competition down in Austin.
I spoke with Bobbie Carlton and Betsy Dupre, co-founders of Innovation Women, and, come to find out, the fact that they're in the running is comical and completely accidental.
“It was random... I don’t even remember how I found it,” Carlton told me.“It was some link and it felt a little bit like a directory and since we were going to South-By anyway, I was like OK, let’s sign up for this thing. I didn’t even realized we had applied until literally Betsy got the notification saying we were one of the finalists.”
Dupre added, “It looked a little like AngelList, so we were filling it out as if we were filling out a profile, and, the next thing we knew, we got an email saying we were one of the finalists.”
Luckily, the duo was going to be at SXSW anyway for some strategic meetings and networking. In general, Carlton has gone down to Texas for the annual festival on several occasions because it offers much opportunity for people in tech and entrepreneurship from all over the globe to come together and connect. The competition this year, is both a pleasant surprise and added bonus.
“I think it’s a great way to connect with different markets,” Carlton explained. “Obviously, for Innovation Women, we’re really strong in Boston but we have women across the country, even outside the country, in our database. We just signed up our first ambassador in Singapore."
Innovation Women’s mission is to set successful women up with speaking engagements to open up more business opportunities for themselves, in addition to increasing strong female presences at events. But it could have a more profound impact when you zoom out and examine what the venture is trying to do on an international level.
Dupre said, “I think it’s important for us to be in those countries, but I also think it’s important for women from those countries to be visible, to come here and share what’s going on in those countries. So not only would it locally be great, sure. It would help them gain visibility for customers or funding for themselves or companies. But also, I feel like there’s a social impact level, where international connections heighten awareness of what’s going on.”
Part of drawing in more international speakers for Innovation Women is to spread the word at SXSW. Pitching in front of the global audience will likely help, but winning the entire the Startup of the Year competition would exponentially increase the impact. So both Carlton and Dupre are hoping the local support from online votes will get them there.
