Building a direct bridge between Belgium and Silicon Valley, the GUILD offers female entrepreneurs the opportunity to combine the best of Silicon Valley’s experts and methodologies with the European approach to building successful businesses.
The GUILD is joining forces with a number of leading Belgian startup support organisations in order to help advance female entrepreneurship. Although, a growing number of initiatives focus on getting more women into entrepreneurship, data reveals alarming trends for female entrepreneurs. In Belgium, gender distribution of female founders in Belgium is only 9.9% according to the European Startup Monitor scoring even lower than the 1 EU average 15.6%.
The strategic partnership with Cresco will help boost both early stage as well as growth stage entrepreneurs’ ‘legal confidence’. Since legal knowledge is often one of the more intimidating aspects to starting and running a business It will help lower that barrier. Cresco will offer 1-on-1 coaching to all Belgian participants in the GUILD Academy and be the host of 2 exclusive events in the GUILD Dinners Series.
“ We look forward to seeing more female entrepreneurs in Belgium and contributing to awareness raising. We will help to bridge the gap and help more women build scalable and ambitious businesses. We are very excited to support the GUILD community in their efforts and look forward to the many new opportunities that building a more diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem offer. ” Natalie Lemense, Partner at Cresco.
“I’m super excited to bring this important program and community to Europe and Asia, and Belgium in particular. In Cresco we have an amazing legal partner offering their expertise to our community. Building on my personal experience with the US as well as the European startup ecosystem, I believe combining the best of both worlds can create magic and that is exactly what the GUILD is about, creating more and better scalable businesses, run by women.” Yonca Braeckman, Head of Global Expansion The GUILD
The GUILD is built on the belief that the whole is more powerful than the sum of its pieces. By connecting the right people through ethical artificial intelligence and building a purpose driven global community, the GUILD leverages a unique combination of technology and human capital to create a modern guild for women to connect and grow in their careers, step into entrepreneurship and find encouragement and inspiration to lead. Much like the medieval guilds, the modern GUILD unites novices and masters and shares the knowledge and expertise of their members for the purpose of growing as a community. The newly established GUILD Academy entrepreneurship program focuses on supporting women to take the leap into entrepreneurship by equipping them with the best tools and knowledge, peer support and access to leading Silicon Valley experts.
