‘Women should learn from the best’ 

Opening up business opportunities for women is everything, says Viktoriya Tigipko of TA Ventures, who is on a mission to get that message across to whoever needs to hear it. 

Founding partner of TA Ventures, a globally-minded and network-driven venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech start-ups, Viktoriya Tigipko started her first business when she was just 18, representing various international brands in Ukraine. 

“I was also engaged in construction, laying specialist flooring in the pharma and food industries. I also produced chemicals myself,” she says, “among many other activities.” 

Tigipko’s switch to the online world happened unexpectedly, she adds. 

“It was a leap of faith. Friends of friends were moving their development teams from India to Ukraine. This was the moment I realised that I have to switch from offline to online. And the transition did not take long.” 

An early starter 

Tigipko says that she knew she would be an entrepreneur from the age of “nine or ten”. She is a firm believer in entrepreneurial education, “education is everything”, she says, and suggests that general education could be transformed by more use of case studies. 

“Children, teenagers, even adults digest information in a completely different way when it is all based on case studies,” she says, offering examples of the way that students are taught at the world’s leading educational institutions, such as Harvard. 

Citing what she refers to as “the curse of the Soviet Union” and “damaged DNA” Tigipko says that a new breed of entrepreneurs has nevertheless emerged in Ukraine. 

She points to the Ukrainian Start-Up Fund, supporting young firms with grants, which have built up their revenues in Ukraine, and are now expanding their operations in Europe or globally. It’s an ecosystem that she says other countries throughout emerging Europe can replicate. 

“There are no start-ups where there is no start-up culture,” she says. 

Tigipko’s TA Ventures has supported more than 300 start-ups, but she has also been aactively involved in the development and support of Ukraine’s tech sector through the Ukraine Start-Up Fund, whose board she chairs, and Women in Tech, a global community active in 23 countries. 

“I co-founded Women in Tech in Ukraine in 2018, with a colleague,” says Tigipko. “It continues to grow and we will have 50 chapters within the next two years, with 50,000 women on board.” 

The core idea is that women help each other with whatever questions they may have. 

“If you are planning to expand operations in Saigon, Singapore, London or the US the idea is that we have someone there to help you,” says Tigipko. “Do you need developers? Do you need a co-founder?” 

Her own record as an investor is impressive. TA Ventures has six successful IPOs and 11 unicorns in its portfolio. 

“We are happy with our results,” she adds, modestly. 

From this year, Tigipko says that TA Ventures will be raising 20-30 million euros to invest in the companies of the future, across fields such as digital health, robotics, biotechnology, deep tech, enterprise optimisation and cybersecurity. 

‘The glass ceiling remains intact’ 

Clearly a huge supporter of female empowerment, Tigipko is concerned that according to recent data from the United Nations, at the current level of progress, it will take hundreds of years to close all gaps between men and women. “The glass ceiling remains intact,” she says, adding that this is why initiatives such as Women in Tech are so important. 

“We have to be more focused on business,” adds Tigipko. “What we are doing with Women in Tech, and my colleagues from other organisations, is basically giving women the opportunity to progress, to become independent, and to become leaders – opinion leaders. We are creating the opinion leaders who can change the mentality of an entire generation, and that’s important.” 

Tigipko believes that the key to this mentality shift is for women to start doing business together. 

“When they start to do business together, internationally, this helps a lot – they can learn from each other.” 

Peer-to-peer initiatives, such as Women in Tech or the She’s Next Empowered by Visa programme, help. “Women should learn from the best,” adds Tigipko. “Opening up business opportunities for women is everything.” 

In conclusion, Tigipko says that she is investing a lot into changing the paradigm.  

“Gender equality is increasingly driven by economic parameters,” she says. “Firms are realising that having a balanced team in terms of gender is good for business. With all of my initiatives, from TA Ventures to Women in Tech, I want to make more companies aware of that.”