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In No Boundaries Event

Providing Access to Opportunity for Innovators to Start Up with SAP

Starting a new business is never easy. For underrepresented entrepreneurs such as women and people of color, however, the challenges can be especially daunting.

In 2018, SAP’s network of no-equity-ask external startup accelerators SAP.iO Foundries was embarking on a journey: exponentially scale its global ecosystem of innovative startup partners to help SAP customers extend their SAP software landscape. At that time, the team was shocked to learn that despite the fact diversity yields better innovation, the majority of venture funding primarily goes to invest in startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic. For example, only 2.3% of global venture capital (VC) funding went to startups with only female founders, and Black women in the U.S. had raised just .0006% of all tech venture funding since 2006.

As a steward of purpose-driven innovation, SAP recognized its duty to be intentional about how it invested in and scaled its ecosystem of software startup partners. It recognized that driving inclusive entrepreneurship in the enterprise software and VC industries could accelerate innovation, reduce bias, and drive better outcomes.

In 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP pledged to scale SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023.

The SAP.iO team crafted a clear and effective strategy to achieve this commitment:

  • People: Scaled a diverse team and mentor community of leaders with connections to different communities around the world. The SAP.iO Foundries team is currently 63.3% female and represents more than 15 nationalities, compared to SAP’s overall 34.3% women in the workforce.
  • Processes: Committed to investing the time to empower more entrepreneurs to start up with SAP, review every application for the program, set transparent criteria for selecting startups to participate in programs, and regularly measuring progress.
  • Participation: Attended, sponsored, and hosted events such as Culture Shifting Weekend, StartOut Equity Summit, HBCU National Braintrust, and more to expose underrepresented founders and their investors to the opportunity of partnering with SAP.
  • Partnerships: Created partnerships with organizations including the United Nations Foundation, World Economic Forum, Les Déterminés, Latino Startup Alliance, Gentry, Chatham House, StartOut, and more.

Great Impact

Implementing this strategy has been so successful that by July 2022, SAP.iO achieved its goal of supporting 200 startups founded or led by a female or underrepresented entrepreneur six months ahead of schedule. The 200 startups make up 44% of the SAP.iO portfolio of 450 startups and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (two of four)
  • 42% in cumulative VC raised by startups within the SAP.iO portfolio (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

One of the most successful startups in the SAP.iO portfolio is female-founded Censia Inc. It recently joined the SAP Endorsed Apps, a designation achieved by less than one percent of SAP Store partner solutions. Censia augments HR management software provided by SAP with AI-powered resume review, passive sourcing, and candidate evaluation software. Censia has successfully closed 14 go-to-market opportunities with SAP and major brands such as Tapestry Inc., TJ Maxx, and PepsiCo Inc.

Censia CEO Joanna Riley reflects: “Entrepreneurship is about continuous learning and to be able to be part of SAP.iO, I feel like I’m cheating. I’m learning from lessons that have been learned through years of experience that SAP has acquired and taking those and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company, especially [those] focused on enterprise, to look at SAP.iO as a real solution to build a produce that is great for enterprise.”

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In Featured, Inclusiveness, No Boundaries Event

SAP Achieves Goal of Supporting 200 Startups Founded or Led by Underrepresented Entrepreneurs Six Months Ahead of Schedule

SAP announced that it has supported 200 startups founded or led by a female or member of an underrepresented group as of July 2022. This is six months ahead of the initial goal of 2023.

In January 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive, inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP recognized that diversity yields better innovation, but that most venture funding goes to startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic.

Therefore, SAP pledged to scale its global network of the no-equity-ask external startup program SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship. SAP also set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023. To achieve this, the SAP.iO Foundries program has built a diverse team, communicated a clear startup sourcing process, participated in events and partnered with organizations that support underrepresented founders.

As a result, underrepresented startups now make up 44% of the portfolio of 450 startups in the SAP.iO program and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 out of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (2 out of 4)
  • 42% in cumulative venture capital raised by startups within the SAP.iO program (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

“SAP firmly believes talent is equally distributed globally and opportunity is not,” said Alexa Gorman, Global Head, SAP.iO Foundries and Intrapreneurship, SAP. “We are doing everything we can to provide more access to opportunity to founders everywhere while simultaneously adding incremental innovation and value for SAP customers.”

During the program, startups receive technical and go-to-market support to help them integrate with SAP and become part of a curated ecosystem where their offerings are easily accessible to SAP customers.

One of the most successful startups of the SAP.iO program is female-founded Censia Inc. Recently, Censia’s app was named an SAP endorsed app, a designation achieved by less than 1% of partner solutions offered on the SAP Store site. Censia augments HR management software provided by SAP with AI-powered resume review, passive sourcing and candidate evaluation software. Censia has successfully closed 14 go-to-market opportunities with SAP and major brands such as Tapestry Inc., TJ Maxx and PepsiCo Inc.

Joanna Riley, CEO of Censia, said, “I’m learning lessons that SAP has acquired through years of experience and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company to look at SAP.iO as it is an invaluable resource for startups, especially ones focused on enterprises.”

The SAP.iO Foundries program plans to build on its momentum. By 2028, it wants 45% of its portfolio to be comprised of startups founded or led by people whose share of venture capital funding in the technology industry is proportionally less than their share of the population. This would be up from 40% in 2018.

The program works to achieve this goal by continuing with its winning execution strategy as well as adding geographical representation as a sourcing focus. For example, SAP.iO Foundries expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 and will target specific countries in existing SAP.iO Foundries regions such as Nigeria, Pakistan and others.

To learn more about how SAP.iO is helping innovators start up and scale with SAP, please visit https://sap.io.

In Inclusiveness, No Boundaries Event

SAP.iO No Boundaries Partners with Les Déterminés to Support Entrepreneurship in Working-Class Neighborhoods and Rural Areas

SAP France announces that its SAP.iO Foundry Paris accelerator is supporting the 12th promotion of the association Les Déterminés, whose mission is to develop entrepreneurship in working-class neighborhoods and rural areas. As part of this partnership, SAP.iO Foundry Paris is committed to making its premises and the expertise of its employees available to support the 20 entrepreneurs in its new promotion, selected from more than 470 candidates. 

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In Inclusiveness, No Boundaries Event

Women in Tech Summit at Austin Startup Week

Vanessa Liu, SAP.iO Foundries North America, gave the keynote address to kick off the Women in Tech Summit at Capital Factory for Austin Startup Week, one of the largest technology, innovation, and business events in Austin where SAP served as the title sponsor. The Women in Tech summit was a day full of programming to help inspire, engage and elevate female entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

Livestream coverage: https://youtu.be/kI5BH4WqYEo?t=1277 (starting at 21:17 for Vanessa)

Link to official Austin Startup Week 2019 schedule for SAP’s Sessions

In No Boundaries Event

HBCU National BrainTrust

Vanessa Liu, VP of SAP.iO Foundries North America, joined an industry panel with leaders powering Black innovation through corporate venture capital efforts in this year’s HBCU Braintrust.

Powerful partnerships with SAP, T-Mobile, IBM, Intel, and Amazon all investing in women, URM businesses, and academic programs help pave the way in making a difference in how these groups are empowered and funded.

In No Boundaries Event, Featured

Austin Pitch Competition

Together with The Riveter, SAP.iO is hosting a pitch competition on Thursday, June 13th in Austin, Texas.

For this pitch competition, we’re seeking a diverse group of exceptional founders and startup teams driving innovation in Health and Experience Management–the focus of this year’s SAP.iO Foundries Fall Cohorts. The extraordinary business leaders that win the competition will be awarded fast-track access to the SAP.iO Foundries Cohorts selection committee, along with membership to The Riveter.

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In No Boundaries Event

Supporting Women’s Healthcare

In partnership with HITLAB, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and BayerG4A, SAP.iO Foundry New York is proud to support the HITLAB World Cup Challenge 2019 which focuses on emerging technology applications and systems that improve medical care and the provision of healthcare among women worldwide.

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In No Boundaries Event

Speed Mentoring for Women

Together with NextPlay.ai, SAP.iO is excited to start a series of Speed Mentoring for Women at SAP events with the goal to bring women across a variety of disciplines together and provide an opportunity to connect, ask questions and learn from women leaders.

In No Boundaries Event

Rawabi Startup Challenge

 SAP.iO together with the SAP Training & Development Institute team and Rawabi TechHub ran the SAP.iO Rawabi Startup Challenge from March to May 2019 to support and encourage entrepreneurship in Rawabi and the Palestinian Territories. 

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In No Boundaries Event

Girl Talk by Girl Up

Christine Tao, Co-Founder & CEO of Sounding Board, SAP.iO Foundry SFC and Shuchi Rana, Head of SAP.iO Foundry SFC shared the stage at Girl Talks, a forum for women to share & learn from one another’s experiences hosted on behalf of the United Nations Foundation and Girl Up. Centered around the theme “Redefine Possible,” powerful female leaders will share stories from their own experience that highlight a time where they broke through a ceiling, created something new, or empowered themselves/others to pave their own path. This event harnessed the power of storytelling to showcase the strength of female leaders from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of leaders.