Last weekend, the city of Budapest hosted another edition of the Women Startup Competition. The Hungary-based startup BOOKR Kids, an interactive library application for children, won the competition. The application inspires kids to read classic and modern children’s stories even in our digitalized world. Kids Friendly Media, a Finnish startup, came second. Kids Friendly Media, with over 8 million users, helps families discover and book kid-friendly services they need.
The organizers of the Women Startup Competition stated, that they received over 160 applications. Beside the 17 Hungarian startups, most applied from the UK, Spain and the Scandinavian countries. The prizes included Apple products, free coworking office usage in Budapest and free team tickets to some of the biggest startup conferences.
The project which aims to foster women entrepreneurship, has two goals. On the one hand, through the supporting ambiance and environment set by the organizing team, they wish to help, inspire and prepare female entrepreneurs to become successful in an environment dominated by male entrepreneurs; on the other hand, they wish to attract investors’ attention to the less represented, but high potential of female entrepreneurs. The well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm First Round Capital, has already announced in their last year’s report that there is a 63% higher success rate in their investments where there is at least one female founder in the team, compared to those who have only male founders.
High interest of startups and investors inspired the organizers of the contest to start negotiating about bringing the event to other continents. More info about the 13 finalists can be found here.
