A courageous space for women entrepreneurs

"It's not an elitist club; it's a space for personal and professional growth." That's how Beatriz de Vicente, CEO of Juno House, presents this Barcelona-based women's club. The club already has around 600 members (who pay a fee starting at 75 euros) and some 60 supporting companies. This week, to mark International Women's Entrepreneurship Day, the Founders' Mindset event was held, bringing together around 100 people, mostly women in management positions. The goal: to discuss the business challenges transforming sectors such as technology, sustainability, leadership, and team management. The focus was on the entrepreneurial mindset as a driver of innovation and growth through conversations and applied learning. "Adopting an entrepreneurial mindset allows you to gain speed and adaptability, and to focus on the goal over the process," explains De Vicente. "It's about moving from maintaining structures to generating value, introducing agility, vision, and a new relationship with risk," explains the vice president of Netmentora Catalunya, the largest European network of business leaders for job creation and knowledge exchange. Her business experience is extensive: more than 15 years in marketing, communication, and business development, working for leading companies such as Pirelli, Nintendo, Octagon, and Mapfre. In her last role before Juno House, she spearheaded disruptive business models at PepsiCo.

The Founders' Mindset event brought together speakers from technology, communication, mobility, and social innovation companies, including Sandra Wolf (Riese & Müller), Stephany Oliveros (SheAI), Marta Castillo (Back Market), Julie Campbell (Aesop), Mabel Mas (El Periódico), and Reclaim, among other voices from the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ultimately, although the club brings together an equal number of female entrepreneurs and executives, the truth is that the start-ups They have grown 30% faster in revenue, investment, and job creation than traditional corporations, according to data from Startup Genome and Dealroom. This ability to move quickly and adapt is what the Founders' Mindset aimed to convey.

Female entrepreneurship in Catalonia

Female entrepreneurship in Catalonia appears to be thriving. In Barcelona, ​​women now account for 42 percent of new businesses, a 1.2 percent increase compared to the previous year, while men have seen a 7.6 percent decrease. Over the past five years, the trend for female entrepreneurship, both nationally and locally, has been clearly upward in terms of volume, visibility, and institutional support. Some data illustrates this: while in 2020 the Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate for women in Barcelona stood at approximately 6.8%, by 2025 we have reached a record number of female entrepreneurs, with a TEA of 7.8%. However, it is not without its challenges, and some difficulties persist. Access to seed funding remains unequal: only 7% of funding rounds go to projects led exclusively by women and 18% to mixed-gender teams. The remaining 75% goes to projects led by men. "It's much harder to start a business if you're a woman, twice or three times harder than if you're a man," explains Eva Vila Massanas, co-founder of Juno House and founder of WeEqual and Sheleadre, with 25 years of experience in management and board positions in technology and business environments. retail, With a professional career that has taken her to the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and Spain.

In fact, De Vicente explains that women, when launching a project, are more cautious and enter the market with much more measured funding figures than men. Thus, she says, while women raise an average of between €10,000 and €30,000 to launch a project, men start at €100,000. However, the women who ultimately succeed with their projects are very good; an aspect, she says, that can be attributed to the fact that the selection process is so rigorous, so those who reach the top are exceptionally talented. But beyond this reality, she explains that women have "the same potential and capacity for success as men."

The Juno House executive is clear about where women entrepreneurs should be heading. “Adopting an entrepreneurial mindset allows you to gain speed and adaptability, focusing on the goal over the process,” he explains. His vision is that with this mindset, “you move from maintaining structures to generating value by introducing agility, vision, and a new relationship with risk.”