Contilio the only UK finalist for the global Microsoft Female Founders Competition

Microsoft names its finalists in its $4M Female Founders Competition.

Contilio Microsoft EQT SVB global startup competition construction aiFinalists in the Female Founders Competition made their pitches on Nov 14 at the Microsoft Reactor in San Francisco.

Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, wants to bridge a funding gap in venture capital and dispel the misconception that few women are building enterprise tech companies.

M12, along with EQT Ventures and SVB Financial Group, launched the Female Founders Competition in July, which will award two women-led companies $2 million each in funding. Ten finalists, selected from 800+ submissions from 28 countries, pitched their companies to judges Wednesday at the Microsoft Reactor in San Francisco.

“There’s some sort of myth out there that there just aren’t a lot of women who are starting enterprise tech companies and that they’re generally focused on consumer. I think we’ve proven that’s not true with this competition,” said Lisa Nelson, managing director of M12, which was previously known as Microsoft Ventures.

Broadly, consumer tech companies market to the masses, while enterprise tech companies focus more on selling to other companies.

Women make up about 40 percent of M12’s investment team, but only 7.5 percent of founders in its portfolio are women, according to Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president and global head of M12. That’s not enough, and he hopes M12’s investment team, with its more diverse networks, can discover entrepreneurs that less-diverse teams might not come across.

“If we just play it safe and we just go back to our own networks, we will never solve this problem,” Kashyap said. “There’s no shortage of smart female entrepreneurs. We just have to look harder to find them.”

There’s good reason to fund female entrepreneurs. Research shows that companies led by women tend to generate better returns. Still, just 2.2 percent of venture capital funding in the US last year went to companies founded only by women, according to data from industry tracker Pitchbook.

Nelson wants the competition to bring awareness to this issue and to give hope to the finalists that there are investors who want to bridge the gap in funding.

In addition to $2 million in funding, the two winners will also get access to tech resources, mentoring and legal counsel. The winners will be announced Dec. 11. The other 8 companies will get access to Azure credits and co-selling opportunities with Microsoft.

Here are the 10 finalists:

  • Acerta Analytics (Canada)
  • BitDam (Israel)
  • Contilio (United Kingdom) : founded by CEO Zara Riahi in June 2018, Contilio is an AI-based analytics platform, empowering the construction industry to understand, predict and significantly improve the performance of multi-million dollar projects.
  • CrowdAI (United States)
  • Features Analytics (Belgium)
  • Jargon (United States)
  • Mental Canvas (United States)
  • TrialJectory (United States)
  • Capital (Ireland)
  • Wenspire (Israel)

Source: M12 blogc|net article, Contilio