Entrepreneur talk promotes women in tech

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This article was published 02/02/2024 (851 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three women sat at the front of the room, ready to take questions.

None had expected to be technology start-up founders in their early careers. Yet, there they sat Wednesday evening in Winnipeg, fielding questions about running a business and finding funding and keeping motivation.

Crawl, walk, run, said Catherine Metrycki, chief executive of Callia, a successful flower company.

She spoke to a room of eager entrepreneurs and people curious about start-ups at the North Forge Technology Exchange-hosted event, in partnership with the Information and Communications Technology Council. Both have a goal of bringing more women into the tech industry.

“The crawl is like the easiest, scrappiest, get it out the door in 48 hours,” Metrycki explained. “The walk is, like, you start to put some resources toward it.”

Run comes when you’ve “made it.”

She sat between Carly Schuler, co-founder of Hoot Reading, an online tutoring service, and Carine Bado, founder of business consulting firm My Little Tribe.

Bado recalled her 12-year journey: financial analyst, consultant, eventually entrepreneur.

“I didn’t even think that I was a tech founder,” she said. “I thought you needed to have a computer science degree to be a tech founder.”

Women consume just 22.5 per cent of Canada’s digital economy employment, but make up 47 per cent of the country’s total workforce, according to the ICTC.

“Closing the gender gap really represents an economic opportunity for Canada,” Allison Clark from the ICTC said in a pre-recorded presentation.

A 2017 McKinsey & Company study found $150 billion to $440 billion could be added to Canada’s gross domestic product by 2026 if the gender gap closed.

“We found that there actually are pretty good levels of gender diversity in those entry-level technology roles,” Clark said. “But then when you look at the mid- to senior-level roles and leadership roles, gender diversity — specifically, women’s representation — really falls off.”

The ICTC released a report including recommendations for tech organizations and managers; it’s working to test the recommendations across Canada.

“Our goal today is to let all of you know, no matter where you are in your career, you belong in tech and in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Whitney Moir, North Forge program and communications director, told the crowd.

A majority of attendees were women. One audience member asked about securing venture capital funding.

“The very early days of Callia, when it was like me and my computer, I gave discount codes to anybody that could take one,” Metrycki recalled.

She sold for cheap to “get proof of concept” before phasing out discounts to see if customers would pay. Getting people in the door and showing a level of growth helps attract funding, she said.

Metrycki hadn’t considered her business a technology company, at first. When starting it, she was a marketing professional unsure of what to do next.

“I wanted to start a flower company,” Metrycki said. “I realized very quickly that what I was trying to do — which was phenomenal customer experience in flowers — I couldn’t do without tech.”

The flower business has turned into more of a tech and logistics company as the years have passed.

“I would say that 85 per cent of our founders do not have a tech background,” said Joelle Foster, president of North Forge and the evening’s moderator.

Instead, hire people with tech training or partner with a tech-savvy co-founder, she said. “I’m the least technical tech founder you’ve ever met.”

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com