Academy for Women Entrepreneurs

Hi, I’m Ceylan, born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey by a family full of diversity and entrepreneurship. 

My mother, who opened an architecture practice at the age of 27 in Turkey in 1980s, has been a strong inspiration, shaping my personality and mindset greatly.

I witnessed her hard work and perseverance building a successful business against all aspects of gender inequality and harassment. As a result, the topics of women empowerment, gender equality and diversity are close to my heart. 

 I have lived, studied and worked in four different countries. And as a minority background woman, I have experienced the hardship of being a woman entrepreneur. 

My 15 year career in strategy and marketing have been crucial in my own previous entrepreneurial successes and financial independence.

Now a London-based business strategist and coach, my mission is to empower more women business owners to grow their businesses with confidence and fulfilment.

We are 100 years away from gender equality (World Economic Forum).

Investing in women's economic empowerment sets a direct path towards equality, with entrepreneurship being one of the strongest solutions to achieve this, as it allows women to take control of their future (UN).

Only a small percentage of women business owners grow their company beyond £1m turnover, due to a lack of training, network and access to financing.

Our online platform of training, coaching and collaboration provides women entrepreneurs with access to accessible, simple and applicable business training supported by experts and a community of like-minded female founders.

We aim to elevate humanity by empowering women through entrepreneurship and bring about gender equality globally within our lifetimes.

Female entrepreneurship - with the right guidance and support - has the power to affect global social and economic change, including bringing about gender equality sooner than the World Economic Forum's current estimate of 100 years. 

Entrepreneurship is a real enabler of choice for women as it provides greater financial and personal freedom (UN).

Supporting female entrepreneurship can also have an immense positive economic impact. In the UK alone, £250bn could be added to the economy if women started and scaled their businesses at the same rate as men (Alison Rose Review).

But there are 33% fewer women entrepreneurs than men. And the majority operate as solopreneurs or micro-businesses (<5 employees and <£1m turnover), often in slow-growth sectors.

Lack of business training and access to networks are significant roadblocks to women entrepreneurship (EU Commission/WeGate).

While many business coaching and training offerings are available, none are designed to meet the specific needs of c.250m female solopreneurs and micro-business owners globally (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2019), specifically: 

1. Time: Training can be time-consuming and not suitable to the entrepreneurial life 

2. Practicality: Concept-heavy business training is not applicable for business owners needing pragmatic solutions

3. Affordability: Training and coaching fees are beyond reach for this audience

Our vision is to become the worldwide centre of excellence for women entrepreneurship. In the future, we hope to provide opportunities to meet industry leaders, potential investment/finance partners and run global level studies to increase our understanding of the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. Our ambition is to enable women to learn, grow and collaborate with peers and with corporate companies from all over the world

Today, Academy for Women Entrepreneurs is an online platform of training, coaching and collaboration specifically designed for women solopreneurs and micro-business owners.

We help women business owners develop their business acumen through innovative, and applicable business training and coaching. We also provide access to a supportive community of like-minded female founders, experts and mentors.

Our platform currently provides:

• Action-oriented business training modules (with supporting videos, case studies, templates and tools) where content is structured to encourage entrepreneurs to take immediate action about a specific aspect of their businesses. 

• Mentorship, coaching, and expertise via online workshops, webinars and offline events. 

• A community of like-minded women entrepreneurs and potential customers to help find opportunities to grow their businesses.

• Accountability hubs and sector-specific mastermind clubs within the community.

Women micro-business owners tend to operate businesses that: 

• Practice their passion or profession (stylists, florists, architects, lawyers, bakers)

• Balance family and work-life (virtual assistants, designers) 

• Can follow corporate ‘burnout’ (accountants, trainers, coaches)  

Consequently they often lack business management knowledge and skills, leading to a lack of confidence and fear of failure.

We regularly engage with our community via WhatsApp and Facebook, conducting interviews and surveys to help us better understand their challenges and refine our offering. 

Via this engagement we have identified business growth, lack of time, clarity, focus and taking action as their primary challenges. Our training is focused on addressing these within a short, action-oriented format, and it’s proving popular.

In response to the COVID crisis we ran a (free) 12-week programme to help women founders navigate the uncertainty. To date we've supported hundreds of women entrepreneurs across the globe including UK, Nigeria, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Turkey, US, Suriname and Lebanon - with zero marketing budget.

As we move toward a for-profit business model we will continue in this spirit via our 'Buy one, give one' scheme. For every paying member, we will provide membership to a woman entrepreneur from a developing economy.

With more women entrepreneurs, we can help build financial stability and bring about gender equality sooner. 

Yet women entrepreneurs can be left behind as they struggle to overcome roadblocks: access to knowledge; network; role models; and finance.

We are already helping to elevate this underserved audience. Our platform is live, and we’ve proven product/market fit with a very small budget and core team. 

To broaden our impact we need more women entrepreneurs from across the globe to join our community. This is where The Elevate Prize comes in, helping us access and support a wider audience of women entrepreneurs.

In 2016 I became a Cambridge University-accredited professional coach. 

Combining my consultancy & marketing background, I began coaching entrepreneurs. 

I quickly realised that women solopreneurs and micro-business owners were lacking business acumen but could not afford coaching or business training fees. 

The idea started to blossom: how can I train and coach this audience so that it has real impact? 

The solution had to be affordable, simple, time-efficient and accessible. 

I explored the idea with different target audiences and mentors in the field of education technology and women entrepreneurship. 

In June 2019 I was invited to European Commission’s WEgate event. There I met hundreds of fellow women founders from across the EU and had very relevant discussions indicating a strong demand.  

What ultimately made me take a leap of faith was discussions with entrepreneurs from difficult economies including Lebanon, Turkey, Poland, Nigeria, Uganda, Mexico, Colombia, and some market research that we conducted with 100 women entrepreneurs in October 2019.  

In late 2019 I built a small team including a minority investor and a co-founder to commence our activities. 

COVID-19 was our tipping point. Since March 2020 we have proven demand and product/market fit on a small scale with 200+ members.  

I am a woman entrepreneur and a mother to a 3 year old girl. 

Having worked in male dominated sectors across the globe, I experienced all the common challenges that working women face: unequal opportunities of carrier growth, salary gap, and even sexual harassment. 

Entrepreneurship was not just a professional choice but also an opportunity to build a better, equal work environment for myself and others. 

Unfortunately, the challenges continued with bigger impact: I lost 60% of revenue when I refused an unprofessional client request; I lost contracts when I announced my pregnancy; I was refused funding because I am a mother. 

I was able to navigate through all that adversity with the help of great mentors and my business acumen. My resilience was forged with my business knowledge and development of my network. 

My experience is not unique. Unfortunately, a vast majority of women entrepreneurs face the same challenges but don’t have access to the similar resources as I, making them vulnerable and less prepared for business success. 

I want to ensure women entrepreneurs receive the expert support they need. Together, as we grow our community, we can contribute to build an equal society for our children.

In short, I am a minority woman with multiple entrepreneurship experiences and 20 years of successful consultancy, marketing, branding, sales, training and coaching background. 

I have four strengths that uniquely position me to deliver this project: 

1. I am a minority woman entrepreneur: I have experienced first-hand all the challenges that our community members are facing. I have also tried many different offers and found them highly irrelevant and inapplicable to micro-businesses. I am part of our community with authentic understanding of their world and a vested interest in improving it.

2. I am a serial entrepreneur: Born into an entrepreneurial family I have faced business challenges since childhood. My first business, which I exited in 2016 by selling my client base, was a consultancy firm specialising in the pharmaceutical sector. I am also involved in other micro-businesses which gives me unique insight.

3. My formal education and background: After my masters in Sorbonne and certification in Cambridge, I was able to acquire a lot of business and training skills through several executive roles within the consultancy and marketing sectors. 

4. Finally, I am a team creator. In my first business I created a virtual team of 36 people to grow our activities in 4 different territories, in less than 3 years. I know that this is an incredibly audacious dream and I know my weaknesses, therefore I am already building (and prepared to add to) my team, motivating and inspiring these talents to help make this dream a reality. 

COVID-19 brought significant challenges to our business model and fundraising activities. 

Prior to COVID-19, we had been running face-to-face training workshops, giving ourselves the opportunity to better understand the relevance of our content to the target audience.

We officially launched in Central London on 6 March 2020 at an International Women's Day event that we hosted for 50+ women solopreneurs and micro-business owners. We had more than a dozen sign-ups to our workshops that day. 

COVID-19 lockdown measures kicked in 2 weeks later. So, this was a very big challenge to pilot.

To build our community and continue to engage with and support women entrepreneurs we launched a free COVID-19-focused crisis management course: EMPOWER Tribe. We had to develop content, produce films and run webinars. We launched EMPOWER Tribe on 6th of April and have been growing consistently ever since. 

In the same month, we launched our crowdfunding campaign. With the economic uncertainty of COVID-19’s arrival in Europe it became very challenging to find funding.

However, unlike many other campaigns running at the same time, with perseverance and team work we successfully completed our crowdfunding target with support from 100+ supporters and the British bank NatWest. 

In 2010, I was promoted to a leadership role within a consultancy firm, after the company had gone through a massive restructure with many redundancies costing them 60% of their client base. 

When I arrived, the team had no trust in higher management. The remaining few clients were on the verge of taking their business away. 

I had to win the teams’ trust, rebuild the synergy and systems while motivating and inspiring everyone to win clients’ trust and stabilise the business. I took a big risk and started open conversations. 

I dared to lead from a place of vulnerability. 

It was my first executive role and I was full of uncertainties and fear. I shared my fears with them. I told them that I didn’t hold the truth, but I needed their help and I believed we could achieve greatness together. I opened-up the books, I shared figures, I shared client feedback and asked for their input. 

As a team we put in place a plan of action.

That was a turning point for the company. Within 6 months, we had stabilised all the existing customers and achieved 20% growth.

There are three dimensions of innovation within our project:

1. A focused offer for this specific target audience

Due to their industries and the slow-growth aspect of their businesses, women solopreneurs and micro-business owners represent the “under the radar” population of women entrepreneurship. While there are many mentorship and training offers available for women founders, generally they target women in tech and startup founders whose challenges, degree of business acumen, and affordability are different to that of our audience. 

2. Our training content

Despite the fact that our training materials are based on different business, marketing, communication, financial strategies and theories, our content is unique and innovative because:

2.1 It is highly adapted to micro-business ownership and their challenges and needs

2.2 It is simplified to be understood and integrated by an audience with no business background

2.3 It uses applied learning and experiential learning technics which allow members to work on their businesses right away

2.3 It is made to create positive habit and compound effect for success

3. Our future platform

Our current platform is our MVP to establish market/solution fit, affordability, engagement and scalability. Our ambition is to build an AI empowered innovative technology which will allow us to: 

3.1 Customise the learning journey for each member depending on their background, industry, needs, expectations and progress. 

3.2 Connect members by geographic, skill, need and relevance criteria to create meaningful collaborations. 

The combination of these three parameters is unique and disrupts the current status quo. 

Our mission is fuelled by the vision of closing the gender gap within our lifetime. Specifically we want to empower women business owners to create and lead successful businesses, thus achieving financial and professional equality in entrepreneurship and contributing toward closing the gender gap sooner than predicted. 

Our theory of change is based on local, regional and global data from Global Gender Report (GGR), Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), OECD, UN Women, European Commission Reports (WEgate and Enterprise Europe Network), Alison Rose Review (ARR-UK) and our own market research amongst hundreds of women entrepreneurs over the last 18 months. 

UN states that economic empowerment of women is utmost crucial in establishing gender equality. GEM, OECD AND EU reports demonstrate that entrepreneurship constitutes a global solution in elevating women and creating social, economic and financial equality. 

WEgate reports state that women founders need support in 4 main areas to create and grow successful businesses. 

1. Access to business knowledge 

2. Access to mentorship and role models 

3. Access to network 

4. Access to finance

Our theory of change is that if we support women entrepreneurs in gaining business acumen and connect them with like-minded peers, mentors, experts and investors we will help them build and grow stronger and successful businesses which will greatly contribute to their economic empowerment thus their social status and gender parity. 

AWE’s activities are focused on three main areas: applicable and adapted business training, connection with mentors and experts and creating collaboration opportunities within the community of women entrepreneurs. 

As an immediate outcome, our current training and network activities demonstrated significantly positive impact on our members’ level of businesses acumen, degree of connectivity, self-confidence and motivation. (testimonials can be found on our website). 

Our medium-term outcome is to create within our members’ businesses: 

- Operational efficiency, 

- Increased revenue thus business growth. 

Despite COVID-19 crisis, we have already started to receive positive testimonials on these parameters. 

Our long-term outcomes are around increased financial stability, higher self-confidence and belief in self efficiency and stronger status in social and economic space which we believe will be observable within 2-3 years.

We currently serve 200 members of which 90% are UK-based, with the rest coming from a wide range of different countries. 30-40% of these are fully engaged with our platform, finding great value from training, coaching and our community. 

Within 1 year we aim to reach 2,000 members with 40-50% actively engaged members benefiting from our solution. We are planning to achieve this through strategic alliances with different women’s business and professional networks. We are also exploring partnerships in different local markets to test-run our solution and gain more traction. 

Within 5 years we aim to reach 1 million members globally with a minimum 50% activation. We want our platform to become a reference for women entrepreneurship. Our content will by then include courses specific to early stage businesses and we will try to partner with universities, foundations, NGOs and other partners to help us reach young women entrepreneurs, particularly from within developing economies. 

Our project is highly ambitious. We want to become a global platform of inspiration, possibility and realisation for as many women entrepreneurs as possible. 

Although this first year is focused on understanding our market and improving our MVP (platform technology and content), we still want to be able to observe the impact of our solution on the lives of the female founders.

Our primary impact goal this year is to see at least 10% of our members growing their businesses. The key strategic imperatives to achieve this are: 

• Reach more women solopreneurs and business owners and convincing them to become our members

• Create the best possible MVP (excellence in content and increased user friendliness of the platform) 

• Create a great community which will help us grow with word of mouth and ambassador programmes

• Attract business leaders and mentors to become our guest experts

Within the next 5 years, we want to become a recognised centre of excellence for women entrepreneurship. Our top 3 impact goals to achieve this are:

• Reach 10 developing economies to provide scholarships to women entrepreneurs. 

• Start training high school level women in entrepreneurship 

• Create international collaboration opportunities between women entrepreneurs 

To achieve this, we need to:

• Have an excellent platform with highest quality content and AI allowing customised learning and connectivity. 

• Create strong strategic partnerships with universities, global foundations, educational bodies and potentially certain governments.

In the next year, our primary barrier is access to funding as this will help us resolve sub challenges including: 

1. How to increase our output of our training content while maintaining quality, and ensuring it is adapted to the needs of different industries and nationalities;

2. How to access different networks of experts and business leaders and attract them to our project; 

3. How to attract, train and retain high quality trainers and coaches as part of our offering;

4. How to build a dedicated support and insight team to help us better serve and understand our members;

5. How to improve our technology and start building our bespoke platform;

6. How to increase awareness of, and interest in us among our target audience. Note that with zero marketing budget we were able to acquire 200 members in 12 weeks, so we expect to be able to increase our reach exponentially with appropriate marketing and PR resources. 

In the next 5 years, we anticipate our main barriers to be:

1. How we access key persons of influence who can change the course of our project - Government leaders, Global Foundations, NGOs, Global business leaders;

2. How we raise bigger investment to take the project on a global level;

3. How we continue to attract talent and build a great team;

4. How we access unknown, new markets and find the right partners within those markets. 

5. How we maintain the quality experience of our platform across multiple languages

Our first year's barrier is funding which we are planning to overcome by four different means: 

1. Winning access to a grant or programme such as Elevate Prize in the social impact or technology/start-up arena;

2. Finding investors who believe and support our projects;

3. Becoming part of an accelerator programme with early stage equity funding;

4. Generating revenue from paid membership subscriptions.

Within the next 5 years the barriers that we are defining are challenging and require our own personal and team synergy growth. Our different plans to overcome these barriers are as follows: 

1. We will access key persons of influence by growing our current network within our local reach (UK and Turkey) and expand from there. Investment from a group or individuals with their own relevant networks will also help here.  

2. We will raise funds of £10m+ from VC by establishing our growth model.

3. We will build our team by creating a reputation on personal and team development, establishing and communicating the company's values and by creating a great environment to work: fair salary, mentorship, international career opportunities, etc.

4. We will access new markets by creating partnerships with charities, foundations and business networks, running pilot projects in those regions before building a high value brand and presence in each.

5. We will maintain the quality experience in multiple languages by building out a native-language team to adapt our content, and local champions to ensure collaboration in those markets.

Our first year's barrier is funding which we are planning to overcome by four different means: 

1. Winning access to a grant or programme such as Elevate Prize in the social impact or technology/start-up arena;

2. Finding investors who believe and support our projects;

3. Becoming part of an accelerator programme with early stage equity funding;

4. Generating revenue from paid membership subscriptions.

Within the next 5 years the barriers that we are defining are challenging and require our own personal and team synergy growth. Our different plans to overcome these barriers are as follows: 

1. We will access key persons of influence by growing our current network within our local reach (UK and Turkey) and expand from there. Investment from a group or individuals with their own relevant networks will also help here.  

2. We will raise funds of £10m+ from VC by establishing our growth model.

3. We will build our team by creating a reputation on personal and team development, establishing and communicating the company's values and by creating a great environment to work: fair salary, mentorship, international career opportunities, etc.

4. We will access new markets by creating partnerships with charities, foundations and business networks, running pilot projects in those regions before building a high value brand and presence in each.

5. We will maintain the quality experience in multiple languages by building out a native-language team to adapt our content, and local champions to ensure collaboration in those markets.

Everything we offer is designed for a very specific audience: women solopreneurs and micro-business owners.

The online nature of our learning and coaching enables our community to participate wherever and whenever is most convenient for them.

Our guided self and group-learning is available at a fraction of the cost of business coaching, making Academy for Women Entrepreneurs affordable to even the smallest of micro-business owners.

We also provide free-for-life access to our special COVID-Crisis Survival course meaning that all, regardless of economic means, can benefit from our expertise, training content and materials.

Our growing global community is also free to join, ensuring that women entrepreneurs from all backgrounds and locations can meet, support and explore new collaboration opportunities with other women entrepreneurs across the globe. 

Premium membership (at £34.99 per month) offers unlimited access to our growing list of training courses and supporting materials, our training webinars and all the community channels. 

Mastermind membership (£64.99 per month) comes with access to all the above as well as group coaching sessions.

Mastermind 121 membership (£119.99 per month) includes access to all the above plus extra 1-2-1 coaching sessions. 

In addition, we operate a 'Buy One, Give One' scheme. We believe in the power of female entrepreneurship to effect global social and economic change. And we believe empowered women should help to empower others. That’s why for every paying Premium member, we will provide the same membership to a woman entrepreneur from one of the world’s developing countries.

Our revenue model is a combination of Entrepreneur Support (i.e. selling our business support services via memberships) along with the afore-mentioned funding sources: access to grants and programmes in the social impact or technology/start-up arena (such as Elevate Prize); investment from individuals or groups who believe in and support our projects; and early-stage equity funding via an accelerator.

We are at an early stage with our project and, having proven initial demand and started generating membership revenue, we now need to raise funds to build product, generate traction, team and engagement. 

Our initial projections show us that we need to have 20-24 months of investment for growth before we start to break even. For this period, we need to raise around £450k as our peak outflow shows which we will reach around this around months 15 to 18.

Around month 24 we forecast breaking even thanks to the membership subscriptions sales. 

Having said that with an aim to scale globally we may need to raise further funds to be able to afford each growth stage and new market entry. We believe, by year 5, our revenue stream will allow us to financially self-sustain the business and its future growth.

We launched our paid-for membership in early July 2020, generating $USD 310 recurring monthly revenue within our first week of launch. 

In addition to this we have raised funds 3 times to date:

• Private investor equity funding: $USD 62,000 

• Crowdfunding with 101 supporters: $USD 12,500

COVID-19 Special Business Loan: $USD 12,500

As per our projections we will need to raise funds by September / October 2020 to maintain our positive cashflow. 

In total within the next 2 years we are aiming to raise between $USD 450,000 to 550,000 to reach our break even point on time and deliver the impact that we are hoping to create amongst women entrepreneurs. 

If we are fortunate enough to be awarded the Elevate Prize, the minimum amount available would cover 75-80% of our project overheads, enabling us to focus on delivering impact instead of pitching to investors. 

2020 – our expenses would be around $USD 190,000 of which 30% is allocated to our growing team, 30% dedicated to developing our MVP (both the learning content and platform) and 30% dedicated to marketing and growth activities. The remaining 10% will be used to cover miscellaneous business expenses and any unforeseen overheads.

I can only achieve my dreams with a support network of like-minded, social impact heroes, and The Elevate Prize is key to realising these ambitions. 

It can provide access to experts, peers and industry leaders, building an unimaginable source of inspiration, motivation and mentorship. It will also provide access to sources of knowledge, data and training which will only better our vision and optimise our action plan to get there. 

I believe the Elevate Prize will:

• Increase reach among women entrepreneurs, growing our community and members via partnership networks and marketing and PR;

• Provide access to key persons of influence to change the course of our project - Government, Foundations, NGOs and business leaders;

• Open doors that will enable us to raise bigger investment as we take our project global;

• Introduce the right global and local partners (charities, foundations, business networks) to grow our presence within new markets;

• Introduce us to academic and research partners to build our learning and insight proposition.

• Allow us to build a strong team motivated by social impact and making a difference.

• Enable us to invest in an AI-backed training platform, attracting the best business experts to increase the quality of our training materials. 

Moreover, gaining access to Elevate Prize funds will help us focus 100% on the social impact that we want to create in elevating women entrepreneurs instead of trying to find funds, losing time, energy and focus from our main reason d’etre. 

We have 3 immediate priorities. 

1- Grow our reach: This means partners who can help us put our offer in front of more women entrepreneurs such as foundations, women networks, women investors. On the other hand, any organisation who could guide and empower our marketing, PR efforts would be a very strong growth partner for us in increasing our share of voice and impact.  

2- Bring excellence to our MVP / platform: 

This means we need to access the highest quality business education (MBAs, Universities, Academies) who could help us in the development of our content. This also would bring us reputation and credibility.

We also need technical partners who will guide us in developing our bespoke, AI backed tech platform.

3- Finally, we need to access key influence people, NGOs and government bodies and investor networks to raise further funds, to accelerate our growth and scale our impact.

We would like to partner with 3 types of organisations:

1. The best university MBA programmes

This type of partnership would allow us to work with experts, helping us create our content to the highest possible standards. We would be able to feed that partnership with insider insights thanks to our continuous surveys and interviews with our members, and user data. These partners would also bring credibility and status to our learning content that could be developed under their supervision. Ideal partners for us within this arena include MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, SAID, Cambridge, INSEAD, etc. 

2. Global Women Empowerment Foundations and NGOs 

Partnering with these types of organisations would help us not only take our offer to global level but also gain incredible insight into different markets and the reality of women’s conditions and entrepreneurship in those markets. We could develop educational projects in partnership with them in different countries or as a global programme. Ideal partners for us within this arena include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mercedes Foundation, Cartier Foundation, and UN women.

3. Local women business networks

These types of organisations are our main growth channels and have been very helpful in building our early traction. We believe at this early stage of our project they will be the most relevant partners to build our community, make ourselves heard and gain an increased understanding of our target audience.