Empowering Female Entrepreneurs: Work to Drive Change at Innovation Norway

In celebration of International Women's Day, Frøya Ventures was invited together with in total 10 talented and passionate entrepreneurs and contributors from our ecosystem to participate in a workshop dedicated to Innovation Norway's new mission for women. This energizing session provided numerous valuable insights for improving our initiatives, along with excellent suggestions for collaboration within the ecosystem to create even more impact and effectiveness.

Female entrepreneurs have the same needs as their male counterparts but also face unique barriers. Innovation Norway aim to address these barriers with effective measures that the entrepreneurs themselves believe in and Frøya Venture is proud to contribute into the discussion. It is a billion dollar potential in females, but the risk capital falls behind. This year Frøya Ventures has been part of several discussions and contributed the “scaling day” and workshops at Innovation Norway.

The work is built on ideas from last year’s workshop at Startuplab (where Frøya Ventures contributed) and through insights and ongoing dialogue with entrepreneurs. In 2025, Innovation Norway are focusing on four key initiatives:

  1. Role Model Campaign – “Entrepreneurs should be the rock stars of our time”
  2. Capital Strategy Program
  3. Ecosystem Initiative
  4. Increased Support for “Startup Grants 2” for teams where at least 1/3 of the founders are women who hold shares in the company

It is well-documented that diversity leads to better results, yet only 1 in 4 entrepreneurs receiving startup funding from Innovation Norway are women. With a low percentage of female entrepreneurs and unequal access to capital for women, Norway is missing out on a significant amount of talent and innovation. Our country has a vast untapped potential for value creation.

“With such a low proportion of female entrepreneurs, Norway misses out on much talent and innovation. There is a large untapped potential for value creation and transformation. At Innovation Norway, we will do what we can to help increase the share of female entrepreneurs.” – Kaja van den Berg, Portfolio Director Start-ups & scale-ups Innovasjon Norge.

Photo by Kirsti Hovde.

“Empowering women in entrepreneurship is not just about equality; it’s about tapping into a vast reservoir of talent and innovation that can build our country and develop new jobs for the future”, says Camilla Dybendal, Founder & Managing Partner in Frøya Ventures.

Frøya Ventures is immensely proud to see that Innovation Norway is committed to doing everything they can to increase the proportion of female entrepreneurs!

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