Juna | Devpost

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Intro

In 2018, the British Government commissioned the Alison Rose review to examine the state of Female Entrepreneurship in the UK. The findings were staggering. Just one in 3 entrepreneurs are women, and only one percent of venture funding goes to all female teams.

The report’s output urged more transparency, more data to be shown about current inequalities and crucially suggested a one-stop shop where female investors, professionals and entrepreneurs could come together. As of 2021, 3 years after the review, such an all-inclusive community has not been attempted. Until Juna.

Concept

Juna is a portmanteau of our 2 female founders, Jun and Sarah, who collectively came up with our idea. In aiming to create this “one-stop shop”, we hope to showcase products for women, by woman, who know the female experience. However, we recognised that 1. Even Amazon had to start with books and 2. We did not want people to buy products simply because they were made my women, but because they were worth buying.

Journey & Challenges

To assess demand, we sent an MVP and questionnaire to a select group of 40 female founders who we believed would sit well on such a platform. From this we learned 3 things; firstly, they would be willing to be a part of the platform at a rate of 10% commission on revenue, secondly, that women wanted confidence as to tax and trading arrangements, and lastly, and most importantly, they were enthusiastic about being part of a community of female artisans.

With this in mind, we amended Juna’s MVP. We decided that we needed to have a competitive commission rate at the suggested 10%, which would incentivise women to join the platform, and give us recurring revenue to market to thought leaders.

Final Product & Juna's Future

However, we put extra work into our sellers-only community page, where we aim to enhance connectivity within the community providing weekly sessions with industry experts, and design and feminist thought-leaders. We hope this means that the path to female entrepreneurship becomes less lonely, and that sellers can find Geographic supply and logistics synergies and even form creative partnerships amongst each other – something which was again highlighted by our Market Research.

Eventually we hope Juna will grow into the all-inclusive platform the Rose Report asked for.