LatAm List – Out of 400 applications, just six female-founded startups were chosen to pitch at the WeXchange Women Entrepreneurs Transforming the World with Technology Pitch Competition in Lima, Peru last week. These companies included: Culqi, Dashfleet, Rebus, Unima, AgroPuma, and WABA.network.
WeXchange, founded by Susana García Robles from IDB Lab in 2012, prides itself on being the largest forum for female entrepreneurs in Latin America, connecting high-impact female founders with investors across the region.
The event brought together speakers and judges from across the world, including Israel, the US, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Hong Kong with the mission of representing female entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon. The highlight of the event was the pitch competition, which showcased female entrepreneurs from across Latin America, specifically with STEM backgrounds, to share their ideas in front of international judges, including from Peru’s Universidad del Pacífico and Angel Ventures.
“It was a great event, not just because of the content, but also for the relationships and the opportunity to share with other women in the regional ecosystem,” said Juliana Villalba, CEO and Co-Founder of Rebus. “Although women struggle more to raise capital, usually the returns they give to investors is MUCH larger than if the startup were led by men. The hard numbers say it: if a company is led by a woman, the returns are better. So why aren’t more VCs investing in companies led by women?”
Rebus is a Colombian startup that created an optimization and prediction engine for event organizers to create custom apps for their events. They recently raised a round of investment from Magma Partners.
In just five years since WeXchange was founded, they have united more than 1200 female entrepreneurs from over 24 countries through their events.
