Cartier Women's Initiative Awards

Navigation

Frédérique Clavel, entrepreneur and President of the Paris Pionnières incubator explains what her association does to help other women launch their businesses and what she believes is the greatest benefit of entrepreneurship.

What is Paris Pionnières?
Paris Pionnieres “Incubator for Women”, is the first Incubator dedicated to women in France and probably in Europe. We coach selected projects, from their very first beginnings to their launch. When launching without large financial support, this period in the business creation process can be difficult for the isolated entrepreneur. We offer coaching and consulting – we help the women find the best way to reach customers, obtain funding and find partners.

Our initiative was selected by the OECD to be presented to countries of the MENA (Middle-Eastern and North African) region. This gave birth to the partnership in Morocco with the AFEM (Moroccan Association for Business Owners), and the creation of Casa Pionnières.

We have several other projects around the world and in France.

How is Paris Pionnières different?
Paris Pionnieres works more as a tool in a precise life period of the entrepreneur’s project in order to accelerate its growth.
The projects selected by Paris Pionnieres are active in innovative services: this includes technology services and caring services. The innovation can be inherent to the business model (an idea for expanding the company rapidly), the market (new market opportunity), or may concern the way services are used.

The companies that we support are ambitious projects with real growth potential and impact on the employment.

The selection committee is composed of men and women, entrepreneurs and risk capitalists.
Paris Pionnieres is supported by the city of Paris, the Ile-de-France state, Caisse des depots (state-owned financial institution), the Ministry for Parity, and a some committed private sponsors such as Grand Thorton.

Are you an entrepreneur? What motivated you to become an entrepreneur ?
In 2001, I created a consulting company named FinCoach. We are now two associates working primarily with big companies advising leaders and managers on their financial strategy. We act in confidential situations, sometimes even internally. We are now considering to tap into young companies, as our know-how in this sector has rapidly grown in the past two years.

The advantage and pleasure of being an entrepreneur for a woman is the freedom. I realised that being concentrated on the results helped me to work more and better. Corporations are not adapted to modern life: young people want more balance between career and private life. This is now evolving.

Entrepreneurship has led me to open my mind, to risk, to be myself!! Sometimes I would like to go bigger, quicker, but it’s a step by step process.

What would you advise an aspiring female entrepreneur?
Be confident, be yourself, take risks! I think it’s important to stick to the values that you believe in, to create “meaningful” businesses.
To think about all this will enable you to better define your entrepreneurial project. It is the coherence between what you are and what you do that will be the main source of energy and that will lead you to successfully pass all the stages of business launching. You have to strongly believe in your business to have the necessary determination that will push you to succeed.

Why do you think women are less prone to create their own businesses ?
Women are very good at creating business. They are organised, concrete, and they are very careful with their money. They pay back better than men.
The only obstacle is that they need more confidence; we need to rethink our relation to risk factors sometimes.
I am convinced that at the end of the day it’s just cultural differences. The Cartier Women’s Initiative, Paris Pionnieres’ initiatives are here to help society foster this shift of mentality, and move beyond these cultural differences and stereotypes!