Oxford spent years studying how women build companies. Now this research can speak.
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- Gabi Leibowitz
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For years, Oxford Saïd Business School’s Inspiring Female Founders initiative has interviewed women founders about how they raise money, take risks, and grow their companies. Women founders remain underfunded and under-seen: female-only teams receive about 2.3% of venture capital, and successful women founders get far less visibility than their male peers, leaving aspiring founders with few role models. Inspiring Female Founders was created to change that.
The knowledge gleaned in these interviews often ends up in a white paper stored away in the annals of their records. Now, with SOFIA for Business, aspiring founders can have a conversation with all the knowledge the initiative has acquired, opening up access for anyone looking to build their business.
SOFIA for Business launched earlier today at the Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Forum (OSEF). It turns the initiative’s research into a voice agent, built on ElevenAgents and supported by the ElevenLabs Impact Program.
What SOFIA does
SOFIA has two jobs. Founders can talk to it to learn from the experience of the women interviewed before them. SOFIA also interviews founders itself, and with their consent, each conversation joins the research, so the knowledge of what makes a successful female founder grows with every new founder who takes part.
The partners behind it
SOFIA for Business was co-founded by Pinar Ozcan, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Oxford Saïd and founder of Inspiring Female Founders. Joining her as co-founders of SOFIA are Amanda Slavin and Arabella Nyffenegger. ElevenLabs supports the project through its Impact Program × Professors, which gives university educators like Ozcan free access to ElevenLabs tools.
SOFIA for Business gives us an opportunity to continue that work, bringing more women into the research and allowing the body of knowledge to evolve as business, technology, and entrepreneurship evolve.
See SOFIA for Business in action
At OSEF, attendees talked with SOFIA for Business at the ElevenLabs booth and added their own experiences to the research. Anyone can watch the five-minute walkthrough, which follows an aspiring founder through SOFIA, or visit SOFIA Lab to learn more.
Gabi leads Impact at ElevenLabs, democratizing access to voice AI for the people who need it most. The Impact Program helps people with ALS and other conditions that can cause permanent voice loss preserve or reclaim their voices, while expanding access to audio AI tools for nonprofits, cultural institutions, and educators around the world. Before joining ElevenLabs, Gabi was a voice-specialized speech-language pathologist, using voice science and research to support patients with complex voice disorders. She received her Master's in Speech, Language, and Learning from Northwestern University and completed her clinical fellowship at the University of Miami.
