Solai Valliappan | Risk and reward – investing in start-ups and championing female founders

What She Did Next

Our guest today is Solai Valliappan and she’s an investor in the tech space, with a keen focus on start-ups that are bringing about positive change.

She’s also a champion of female founders and hopes to inspire more women to start their own companies and get the backing they need to bring their big ideas to the world.

Solai decided to become an investor after observing the lack of women on the funding side – particularly women of colour – and realising that having more female investors would ultimately lead to more funding for female founders.

It was a whole new world for Solai who spent the first 10 years of her career in the insurance industry, starting out as an actuary for a big global firm.

In this episode, Solai talks about making the leap from corporate life to the start-up world, what she’s learned from being one of the few women at the investor table, her role as a #ChooseMaths ambassador to encourage more young women into STEM careers and a new documentary series she’s involved in called ‘Women’s Work’, an initiative of Sydney Women’s Fund, which aims to get more women thinking about their financial future.

LINKS

Follow Solai Valliappan via her blog: https://solaivalliappan.medium.com/

Follow Solai on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolaiValliappan

Follow Solai on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solai_tech/

Watch the ‘Women’s Work’ documentary series: https://womenswork.org.au/

CREDITS

Host and producer: Jacqui Ooi

Join us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatshedidnextpodcast/

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatshedidnextpodcast

Visit our website: https://whatshedidnext.com.au/

What She Did Next is proud to be a part of the Women's Agenda Podcast Network. Visit https://womensagenda.com.au/

What She Did Next acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this podcast is recorded and produced, the Cammeraygal people of the Eora nation and the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal nation. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.