Evening Standard: Episode 5 of Evening Standard's Women Tech Charge podcast with Alice Bentinck of Entrepreneur First
Meet the extraordinary women in STEM changing the world
The Evening Standard’s Women Tech Charge podcast is back for series two and Entrepreneur First co-founder Alice Bentinck is this week’s guest.
Hosted by Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, the CEO of STEMettes.org, Women Tech Charge invites women from all areas of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to share amusing and insightful insights into their careers and what it’s really like to be part of the 17 per cent of the UK’s tech workforce that identifies as female.
The first series featured interviews with ‘Beth’, a senior leader at GCHQ, as well as Priya Lakhani of ed-tech start-up Century Tech and Isabel Garvey, the MD of Abbey Road Studios. You can catch up on all the episodes from series one here.
This series is taking a different twist by broadening out into all areas of STEM. Previous guests this season include Countdown’s Rachel Riley and graphic designer Emma Lawton, whilst Alice Bentinck, co-founder of tech incubator programme Entrepreneur First and co-founder of social enterprise Code First: Girls, is the latest to join Imafidon in the studio.
Bentinck had her first taste of entrepreneurship when she was 16 and tried the Young Enterprise programme at school. Her team was given £10 and tasked with coming up with a product.
“It was just the beginning of understanding that business was a thing and that start-ups were a thing and just the rush of having a small team, creating a product and then selling it to people and they will give you money.”
This stayed with Bentinck through her time as a management consultant at McKinsey, until she and her colleague, Matt Clifford, decided to up sticks and create Entrepreneur First, a programme that brings together people to find a co-founder and create a start-up. EF alumni include Magic Pony, which sold to Twitter, and Bloomsbury AI, which sold to Facebook.
Throughout the episode, Bentinck and Imafidon talk about the importance of the co-founder relationship, the social mission to get more women into tech and coding, and where EF is headed next.
“I can’t imagine anything I would have done over the last eight years that would be as hard, as emotionally challenging or as mentally challenging as building a company. And I can’t imagine anything that would be as rewarding.”
Over the next 10 weeks, you’ll be able to hear about different experiences across tech, including a racing car driver, former politician and an AI researcher on the new podcast. Listen in every Tuesday as the women discuss their routes into the industry, the highs and the lows, and what makes it all worth it.
“You learn so much listening to someone’s journey and from their process, not just what their title is,” explains Imafidon. “It’s really powerful.”
You can subscribe to Women Tech Charge wherever you get your podcasts from, including
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