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Carina Klaffl
Co-CEO at Female Founders
Carina Klaffl is the Co-CEO of Female Founders, a Vienna-based organization dedicated to empowering women in the tech and innovation sectors. Her role focuses on addressing key challenges faced by female entrepreneurs, particularly in securing funding and accessing talent within the European tech ecosystem.
Background and Education
Klaffl's journey into entrepreneurship began during her studies at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, where she specialized in Entrepreneurship. She furthered her education by obtaining a Master's degree in Entrepreneurship from Lund University in Sweden. Prior to her current position, she led the startup accelerator program "Grow F" at Female Founders, where she worked closely with 79 female-led ventures to help them become investment-ready.12
Professional Experience
Carina has a strong background in sales and business development, having worked with various startups in Vienna and Amsterdam. She previously served as the Head of Partnerships at Pioneers, a platform that connects startups with investors and corporations in Europe. Her experience in building relationships has been crucial in her role as Co-CEO, where she emphasizes community building among stakeholders.13
Vision and Impact
Under her leadership, Female Founders aims to create an equitable future through equal opportunities for women in tech. The organization not only supports female entrepreneurs but also focuses on fostering diversity within the startup ecosystem. Klaffl believes that technological solutions should be developed by diverse groups to effectively address the challenges faced by society.24
Overall, Carina Klaffl's work at Female Founders is pivotal in reshaping the landscape for women in entrepreneurship, advocating for a more inclusive and supportive environment in the tech industry.
Highlights
Today I have some exciting news to share with you:
Valerie Hengl will be joining Female Founders’ management team 🎉 . As a seasoned founder and long-time member of our community, her expertise will help us better cater to the evolving needs of early-stage female founders.
We’ve seen the startup market undergo significant changes over the past 24 months, with raising capital becoming increasingly challenging at all stages. This is why we relaunched our Grow F program last year to better meet the needs of early-stage female founders. We are proud to share that our portfolio successfully raised over 15 million euros last year. Our conference "Lead Today. Shape Tomorrow." was also extremely successful in its fifth year. With over 500 participants on-site and more than 5.6 million social media impressions, this underlines the relevance of the sector and the high demand for networking and knowledge sharing.
In the area of leadership and DEI, we’ve decided to focus our efforts on collaborating with strategic partners such as the EIC and other institutions in instead of focusing on own programs. In the course of these strategic changes, Amelia Suda-Gosch, who is responsible for Leadership and DEI in the Female Founders management team, has decided to leave the company. A BIG thank you, Amelia, It was on many levels an exciting and enriching collaboration!
The outlook for 2024 makes it clear - we need to double-down our efforts in supporting our female founder community and we are in a very good position for this. This also means an even tighter collaboration between our venture capital fund (Fund F) and Female Founders. One example of what can happen, when we exploit synergies is the case of the startup Sirius. The Fund F team got to know the startup through the investment-readiness program and a few months later was already acting as lead investor in the pre-seed round of the Dutch climate tech company.
Valerie, I am very much looking forward to working together, your first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by and needs of female founders will be be of great benefit to Female Founders in further development of our core products and thus strengthen our position on the international market.
Lastly, thank you for our outstanding team for the hard work and trust over the last years!
Stay tuned for what is yet to come!
Lisa-Marie Fassl Nina Wöss Fanny Springer Viktoria Stanzl Allie Trok Marlene Masser Elisabeth van Holthe tot Echten Sarah Lisanne Becker Sebastian Gomes Judith Schnaubelt Jaysri Thangam
Lead Today. Shape Tomorrow. is coming back on June 5th and 6th as part of ViennaUp! 600 founders, investors, ecosystem players and corporate executives are coming together to Redefine the Status Quo in European Tech!
AT LTST24, we will shine a light on the following themes: 💰 The Fundraising Playbook 🧠 Beyond Business: A Holistic Perspective on Entrepreneurial Life 👾 Technology Trends that Shape the Future 📈 Running & Scaling a Business
Find out more and secure your Super Early-Bird ticket: https://lnkd.in/dqTQhnYE Looking forward seeing you there!
Big thank you to our great team at Female Founders for always making sure our community is meeting and making meaningful connections at our flagship event.
