Female Entrepreneurship Series: Ruby Cup

Maxie Mathiessen, Julie Weigaard Kjaer, and Veronica D’Souza founded their business Ruby Cup in 2011 in Denmark. The three women met during their Master’s degree at Copenhagen Business School.Their motivation to found the business stemmed from the will to found something with which they not only earn money, but improve the world in at least a small part. 

The Three Founders

Maxie Mathiessen has been active in public, private and non-governmental organizations and has worked as a researcher drafting studies for the UN General Assembly, as a corporate analyst, and consulted on micro-finance topics in Nicaragua. She holds a Master’s degree in International Business and Politics and a Bachelor’s degree in Business, Languages, and Culture from the Copenhagen Business School.

Julie Weigaard Kjaer has a broad professional background with several years of experience in business administration, supplier management, financial planning and social entrepreneurship in both public and private companies. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Business, Languages,and Culture and is a Master student in Supply Chain Management with minor studies in Sustainable Business at the Copenhagen Business School. 

Veronica D’Souza has worked for both for-profits and non-profits as a sales representative, project manager, journalist, creative campaign developer, and strategic advisor. Her special focus is sustainable business, human rights, health, leadership, and managing strategic partnerships. In her Master’s degree, she studied International Business and Politics with a minor in Sustainable Business at Copenhagen Business School and Columbia Business School.

Product and Business Model 

The three entrepreneurs already knew the menstruation cup from American and European markets. At the same time they realized there was a huge problem of African women’s access to feminine hygiene products. They wondered why this simple solution of a menstruation cup was not introduced where it was most needed: in Africa.

Initially, the business model was based on the “Bottom of the Pyramid” theory. However, they realized this approach did not serve the market in Africa, so they modified their business model and sales channels. The menstruation cup Ruby Cup now is sold successfully via e-commerce throughout Europe. For each menstruation cup sold in the western world, a cup is sold at a symbolic price to girls and women in Kenya, where they cannot afford feminine hygiene products and girls often miss a significant number of school days during their menstruation. Infections and disease also result from a lack of feminine hygiene products. The menstruation cup can be used for up to ten years and thereby solves the problem of feminine hygiene on a long-term basis in Africa. 

On the one hand, the three female founders of Ruby Cup are fulfilling their goal of providing feminine hygiene products to girls and women in Kenya. On the other hand, Ruby Cup is being sold and used in many European countries. With the use of Ruby Cup, waste created through discarded feminine hygiene products can be eliminated, as Ruby Cup can be used for up to ten years. 

Financing

The three women of Ruby Cup were able to finance their start-up very successfully from the beginning on. They won multiple international business plan competitions, received a grant from the Swedish government and were backed by venture capitalists. Meanwhile the business is able to finance itself through sales generated. 

Annamarie

Female Entrepreneurship Series

I am a passionate writer about females in business. So when it was time to write my Bachelor's thesis, I saw a somewhat tedious task as an opportunity to conduct research on a women2business-related topic. The title of my thesis is “Gender and Social Entrepreneurship”. I wanted to find out if there were gender differences between social businesses founded by women vs. men. It was an interesting topic to research on, and what made it even better is that I knew I could use some of the material for women2business.

Status Quo of Female Entrepreneurship 

To give you some background information on women in entrepreneurship and why this topic is so important to us: worldwide, there are still about twice as many male as female entrepreneurs. In pursuit of gender equality, the number of male and female entrepreneurs should be the same. What might be holding women back in founding their own business? This is a complex question to answer as the prevailing circumstances for female entrepreneurs differ greatly among countries.

However, one of the most striking research findings in my thesis is that women are significantly less confident about their ability to found and lead a business; the literature supports this finding. Are similar doubts holding you back from following through with your business idea? 

women2business Female Entrepreneurship Series

Every week, we will be presenting to you a successful female-founded business on our blog. We want to show you that by being an entrepreneur you can achieve a steep learning curve and jump-start your career. We also want to encourage you to be bold and reduce possible doubts about founding your own business. We begin with the first profile of a female start-up on Monday. 

Until Monday and let yourself be inspired by our female entrepreneurs!  

Annamarie

How to reach your smart goals

Remember last New Year’s Eve? Probably you were out partying and enjoyed ringing in the New Year with your friends.

But do you also remember your New Year’s Resolutions? Doing more sports, getting organized, quitting smoking, or eating healthier was probably on your list. And with utmost probability, one or several of these resolutions have been on your list before. So why is it so hard to actually reach our goals and do more sports, get organized, quit smoking, or eat healthier?

Research by Dr. Locke has shown that goals are often not reached because they are not specific enough. If a goal is too general, it does not function as a powerful motivator and you are more likely not to reach it.

Setting smart goals

In order to influence yourself and to increase your motivation, every goal should be clear and challenging. By following the SMART-principle, any goal can easily be converted into something more specific and motivating.

SMART is for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Applied to a specific idea like getting organized this would mean:

-Specific: What exactly do you want to organize? Your laptop, your receipts, your apartment? Specify as much as possible!

-Measurable: Define at what point you consider your goal completed, for example when all the stuff in your apartment has been organized into boxes and drawers.

-Attainable: Are you actually capable of reaching your goal? Set goals that are challenging, but still attainable.

-Relevant: If something is irrelevant to you, you will not be motivated to work for it. So tweak your goals in a way that clearly reveals your personal benefit from reaching the goal.

-Time-bound: Always set up a deadline for your goals, for example to organize all the files on your laptop by next Friday.

The importance of goal-setting

Why is this type of goal-setting important for ambitious women (and of course, ambitious men)? If you want to have a successful career, you will constantly have to improve your work, continue learning and developing new skills. This does not happen over night and it will demand time and persistence. However, by setting goals that follow the SMART principle, you can easily keep track of what you are working on and how well you are doing. Consequently, you will be less likely to just give up on your plans.

So why not think about three goals you’ve been trying to reach for a while and define them according to the SMART principle right now?

Carolin

A New Perspective on Equality

In many of our previous articles we wrote about gender equality as a fundamental prerequisite to increase the number of women in male-dominated industries and in C-suites throughout the business world. Equality. Such a promising – and, at the same time, mystified word. Today, I got to thinking about the term. What do we actually mean by it, especially in the context of business? 

Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects
I started asking myself what equality really means while I was writing my Bachelor’s thesis on (you guessed it) a gender and business topic. I was reading a journal article about gendered social entrepreneurship elaborating quantitative and qualitative aspects of gender equality.
Here’s the scoop: quantitative aspects comprise an equal distribution of women and men in all areas of society, like education, work, and positions of power. On the other hand, qualitative aspects imply that knowledge, experience, and values of both women and men are granted equal weight and are used to enrich and direct all areas of society.

Theory of Equality in the Business World
That all sounds pretty theoretical. So let me break this down to the practical business world. We need quantitative equality in all businesses, in all industries. We already know that the current situation is pretty bleak. Less than 5% of women hold the top job at Fortune 500 companies in the US, and hold less than 15% of executive officer positions at these companies. We also need qualitative equality in firms so that on-the-job experience of women is valued equally to that of men. There should be a shift in values, especially in those businesses and industries dominated by males. Think of cutthroat venture capitalist investors, or massive oil companies. Remember the blowout of BP’s drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010? Men typically lead these types of companies, often with traditional male values such as self-interest and sole profit orientation. 

The Potential of True Equality  
If we think about gender equality under these circumstances, beyond quantitative equality, this provides a whole new dimension to equality. To me, it is also a paradigm change in the ways in which companies operate and people view the purpose of their jobs. 

Annamarie

You can(not) have it all

In today’s world, many young women grow up believing that they can have it all. We attend university, study abroad, and do exciting internships. Once we start our first jobs, many of us dream of a successful career. At the same time we think about getting married and starting a family one day. This is pretty much the image of “having it all” for most of us: being able to fulfill our personal and professional goals.

This combination is something most ambitious young women think about. They wonder how it will all work out. I definitely do not know the answer to this question but I do know for sure that it will sometimes be a struggle if you want to have it all. However, with companies and politicians trying to improve the conditions for working women and mothers, I tried to believe that things will probably work out once I am in that particular situation. And before this will happen, I do not have to think through all the details as I wrote here.

But then I read an interview with PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi in the Atlantic and she said the exact opposite of what many women (young and old) believe in: she can’t have it all. I was surprised! This woman is the CEO of a huge international company, she has been married for years, she has two daughters and she is ranked number 13 on Forbes’ Power Women’s list! So why would this woman say she can’t have it all? In the interview, Mrs. Nooyi said “having it all is just an illusion that comes with painful sacrifices and tradeoffs”. So she has it all, but at the same time she feels guilty towards her daughters and her husband for not being able to spend more time with them.

What the PepsiCo CEO said really made me think: if even a woman like her says that women can’t have it all, maybe what we have to do is reframe what we assume to be “all”. If you want to start a successful career, get married and have children you have to compromise. You cannot have 100% of all of these things. Most of us won’t be able to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and at the same time climb the corporate career ladder (well, unless you have Hermione Granger’s time turner…) In my opinion, we should be clear about what we want and how we are going to do it. Not all the details have to be planned, but if you want to have children and work at the same time you probably have to accept that you will see your children less than other moms who only work part-time or stay at home. However, that should be fine with you!

So maybe we really cannot have it all. Instead, I guess we can have all that we want!

Carolin

If you want to read another article about this topic: go and read “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All." by Anne-Marie Slaughter.