Dear Female Founder — An Open Letter to Inspire Future Women Entrepreneurs

Anne Ravanona, Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her

This letter was first published in “Dear Female Founder” by Lu Li and republished on the Huffington Post.

​I am delighted to be one of 66 Female Founders sharing our entrepreneurial wisdom to inspire other women entrepreneurs. Together we have raised over $85 million in investment, generated over $1 billion in revenue and created over 2000 jobs. I think it’s important to amplify our voices, as change-makers and creators of economic and social value.

These are my personal messages to inspire other girls and women to become Women Entrepreneurs and share some of the key things I have learned on my journey so far. I have a 15 year old daughter and 12 year old son, and acutely feel the need to speed up gender equality. You have to be what you can see! Some day soon, I look forward to reading your letter here too!

Dear Female Founder,

Here’s the thing — a secret you know deep down inside of you: You already have everything you need inside you to succeed and be a fantastic entrepreneur!”

From one global woman entrepreneur to another, I have 5 key messages to help you on your unique journey.

1. Be Yourself
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My mother would often write those wise words to me, when I was younger. As Oscar Wilde put it “Be yourself — everyone else is already taken." As an entrepreneur, you really have the opportunity and owe it to yourself to truly be yourself. The more authentic you are, showing the real you (yes, ‘warts and all’) the better you will resonate with customers, your team, your investors, other stakeholders and most of all, yourself. Being an entrepreneur, a changemaker, someone who sees a problem they passionately want to fix and does everything in their power to fix it, takes a huge amount of energy.
You will have many decisions to make every day, you can’t waste energy trying to be someone else, or hide behind a mask.

Your team will follow you and go the extra mile for you and your customers, your investors will invest in you because of what makes you unique — your special mix of character, values, personality, experience, talents and passion. Your family and friends will enjoy your quality time with them, because you are the real you, at home and at work.”

I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 17. At 21, I opened up a Sales office for an Irish company in France, straight out of college, in an industry I knew nothing about. I changed sectors, roles, professions every 3–4 years, honed 5 languages as the voracious, curious learner that I am. Then I decided to be true to myself and my passion: help women leaders in business reach their full potential and create more gender equality — my deepest value. I founded Global Invest Her, to help Women Entrepreneurs get funded faster through demystifying funding. Every day we change hearts, minds, systems. We will not wait 80 years for gender equality — we are doing our part now.

2. Be Brave

Starting and running your own company is hard, and so worth it! You have to be brave enough to say no to a steady salary, clear career path and more stability than on the entrepreneurial roller coaster. You may create new markets, new products, new services or ways of thinking, so be brave and stand by the decisions you make. Expect and embrace all the ‘no’s’ on the journey to yes. Embrace your mistakes, be brave enough to own them, fix them and move on. Don’t beat yourself/your team members up about them. You have chosen the path of the pioneer, an unchartered course, uncertainty. When doubt rears it’s ugly head (it will) and that little voice makes you lose confidence…(it may)… it’s time to..

3. Believe in Yourself

Easier said than done, I know, and if you don’t believe in yourself, your products/cause/team /company you are building, why should anyone else? Trust your intuition and your inner voice. It is a powerful guide, ignore it at your peril. Dramatic as that sounds, it’s true that when I listen to my inner voice and fully believe in myself, magic happens and I increase my impact on the outside world. When I don’t listen to my intuition, I always regret it later.
You have more power than you can even imagine, so it’s time to unleash it — ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. Doing a TEDx talk, being a keynote speaker at conferences and contributing to the Huffington Post shining the light on other amazing Trailblazing women are things I strived for and made happen. ‘What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve’, says Napoleon Hill, and my mind is burning with ideas to amplify women’s voices and gender equality so that we have the same opportunities our male counterparts already enjoy. Follow your passion, believe in yourself.

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