Pledge 1

CivTech committed to identifying specific activities to support female founders at every stage, as well as identifying new approaches to communications to encourage female founders to apply to their programmes. Due to financial constraints within the Scottish Government, CivTech was not able to fully complete this, as the Pledge relied on commissioning external capacity and expertise to undertake a feasibility study. However, they were able to review the design of the exploration and accelerator programmes to reduce barriers to those with caring responsibilities, including the format of delivery of workshops and scheduling of workshops. There have also been a range of steps taken to address barriers and perceived barriers including: prioritising previous female founders in case study and promotional material to provide role model examples for future potential applicants; reviewing schedules of mandatory activities within the programme to accommodate maximum flexibility for those with caring responsibilities; and considering the design and format of the programme activities to enable remote engagement where possible for those with caring responsibilities.

Pledge 2

CivTech also committed to analysing the performance of female-founded businesses and creating a report and new programme to action its findings. Again, due to financial constraints within the Scottish Government, CivTech was not in a position to fully complete this, as the Pledge relied on commissioning research capacity to analyse historical data on the make-up of CivTech companies and expertise to undertake a feasibility study. However, CivTech has implemented a new process for gathering data on founder make-up to improve future data available on alumni CivTech companies.