VRTECH reveals top female CEOs of vacation rental tech companies

Worldwide: VRTECH, the team behind the annual VRTECH Startup Competition, has published a list of the Top Female CEOs of the Vacation Rental Tech Companies.

The prestigious list has 20 CEOs and, according to the VRTECH team, the major themes heard in respect to their successes are “business creativity and ability to think outside the box, solution-oriented thinking, enthusiasm for their people and teams, and utmost support for diversity”.

The role of women in technology is widely discussed and assessed around the world. Although significant progress has been made over the last decade, women still have a way to go to reach real equality with men in the workforce, and more specifically in the technology sector.

According to Silicon Valley Bank, only one in four startups has a female founder. 37 per cent of startups have at least one woman on the board of directors and 53 per cent have at least one woman in an executive position.

In the United States, women have been inching up to make up 46.8 per cent of the general workforce, whereas that number is significantly lower in the tech space.

Only about 25 per cent of the workforce at the top five tech companies [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft] are female. However, women in leadership positions in tech are on par with the national average.

The good news is that women in leadership positions in tech have grown significantly. According to Crunchbase, the proportion of female-founded startups has doubled from 2009, with 21 female-founded unicorns in 2019, compared to only 15 in the year before.

While looking at the numbers for female leadership is one gauge of progress, it is also important to analyse the success of women-led companies.

Studies have shown that women-led organisations perform better than male-only ones. The Pipeline’s Women Count 2020 Report found that companies [UK-based] with executive committees, where more than 33 per cent are made up of women, have ten times more profit margins than companies that are not.​

One of the key reasons behind successful women-led businesses is that women are more likely to practise allyship and are more positive in communicating and relating a company’s mission and achieving company’s goals, as well as inspiring more trust and belief in an organisation’s product or service. This ability to champion on an internal and external level creates more engagement in the business and boosts overall success.

These stats on the rise of women in startup leadership positions signifies important momentum and indicator of change. VRTECH, now managed by an all-female team, said it strives to distinguish and celebrate the women in leadership roles specifically in the vacation rental industry.

The allyship that women tend to have is shown by CEO and co-founder of Hostfully, Margot Lee Schmorak.

In response to what is her biggest achievement, she said: “Building a company culture at Hostfully where innovative products are built, where people feel valued for their unique perspective, and where employees can balance between work and other parts of their lives.”

Yaa Priscilla Birago, co-founder and CEO at Femmebnb, does what she does “in order to maximise safety and peace of mind, empower women economically and encourage them to explore the world on their own terms, fearlessly”.

This spirit of steadfast support for their teams and enthusiasm for diversity movements will propel women’s leadership roles in the vacation rental tech industry in the future.

View the VrTech list here.