Women in Business: Interview with Saygin Yalcin
Born in Bremen, Germany the self-made entrepreneur Saygin Yalcin is one of the most influential people in the Middle East. Today, he lives in Dubai as an investor, founder and CEO of various Internet companies. On his social media channels, he reaches millions - founders and those who want to become one. We spoke with him about women's entrepreneurship, equal opportunities and empathy.
Saygin, I'm very happy to talk to you today about Female Entrepreneurship. Generally, major capital raises for female-led startups are still the exception. Can you explain that to us?
Saygin Yalcin: "I can tell you how I feel about it. And then maybe from there we can explore the topic together in more detail. I've had over a decade of experience by now, hired a lot of people - I estimate over 10,000 - and had a lot of people on my team. The bottom line is that I'm convinced that being blind to gender is the right thing to do. I've realized over the last five or six years how incredibly valuable it is to have women on the leadership team. My first hired director was a woman. I'm struck by that now that you ask. I noticed one thing in my book, which I published this year, that made a huge difference. And that is when I make a big decision, I do these four things: I look at the data and then I try to find someone who disagrees with me. And the third thing is, I try to find someone who basically has a different perspective or a different background. For example, that could be someone from a different culture or someone of a different gender. For me personally, I've noticed that it's important for me to interview a woman. Simply because my life has taught me that women have better intuition. I've often noticed it myself, how stubborn I can be on a subject. And then I was warned by a woman and denied it. However, the feeling she had was usually correct. Now that doesn't mean it's fundamentally so. It was just in my experience that women have very good intuition. And that's one step of those four steps when I make big decisions. The fourth one is I always sleep on it again, no matter how important it is. You usually have one more night. And so a framework has emerged for how I make important decisions. That means if I had to find a difference, which I'm just saying now from a personal perspective, it's extremely valuable to have women on the team with that different perspective. That would also apply the other way around, by the way, if a woman only had women on the team. Basically, other perspectives are valuable. It doesn't always have to be a different gender. A different cultural background or a different age also makes a lot of difference. In any case, it's important to look from a different perspective. But at the same time, that also means it should be 50/50 when you look at all the numbers. For example, you should look at why women get less funding. That is, the proof that there is a difference there, between men and women, is in the numbers. I wouldn't say from my perspective as an investor, just like when I talk to other investors that I know, that they look at gender and that's why they might not consider a woman for funding. But what I do see as a person who is active on social media - and has been for 6 years - and gets zillions of business plans and business ideas and has very clear insights into the demographics of those channels: On my social media channels, close to 90% of those interested are men. I don't filter by gender when I post. However, I do see that there is much more interest from men. But it could also be because women are much less likely to apply and feel confident about it. Or basically have less interest. But it's not because of the skills, because the skills, and I can prove this to you from my experience, are at least as good as those of men. I rather see the problem in the application that women show less interest. And it can also be that it is a kind of vicious circle. In other words, women prefer to follow women. And these women just don't talk about entrepreneurship. I can only say that it's slowly changing, but it's still minimal. Why don't women follow me? When I talk about entrepreneurship, about startups and business ideas. When I give speeches or when I'm on tour, there are significantly fewer women in the audience than men. I think it's also simply because their influence and circles are female, and they in turn talk less about entrepreneurship. One of my goals is - and I would be really happy about it - to have at least 30% women as followers, to maybe then get out of this vicious circle and create the nice effect that these women in turn motivate other women to become self-employed. Thus, we create more female success stories and show women who have "made it". For example, one of my investors is a businesswoman from Saudi Arabia who took over her father's empire and took it even further. That's rather extraordinary for that culture, but just inspiring more than anything else. However, over 99% of self-made billionaires are men. So, to summarize: Internally, I can say women are at least as good as men are at what they do. But I can also say that women are much less interested in topics I discuss - like entrepreneurship, startups and investments - and we need more female role models and inspiration. Also, I can say that investors I know are gender-blind."
In your opinion, do more men than women still tend to be socialized into becoming entrepreneurs?
Saygin Yalcin: "If I had children now, a daughter and a son. Would I say my son will be the CEO and my daughter will do what she wants? I, especially as an entrepreneur, I wouldn't make a difference. I guess it used to be that men pushed their sons rather than their daughters. But nowadays, I don't think it's as noticeable. At least, I hope it is. Especially since I'm seeing an increase in female entrepreneurs because it's become so much easier these days to start small businesses from home or online without having to present yourself on the outside. I also think a lot of women are a bit shy and rather reserved. And maybe don't want to say that they want to become entrepreneurs. The Internet has simplified a lot of things here. As I said, I am convinced that with even more female success stories, the avalanche can soon be triggered. On my social media channels, for example, I produce completely gender-neutral content. I've already complained to my community that too few women are watching. That means we have to work from both sides. So it starts in the family, that it's not automatically the son who takes over, and at the same time, the social environment also plays a role - that you have friends who are involved in entrepreneurship. Why did I become an entrepreneur? I wanted it because my friends and fellow students said they wanted to become entrepreneurs. That's a huge influence. So, maybe we can make a difference here with this interview to encourage women to share more with each other about entrepreneurship."
“Building businesses is a craft like carpentry. If you know how to build, it doesn’t matter if the product is a table or a chair.”
So do you think that socialization is the key reason that men are more entrepreneurial than women?
Saygin Yalcin: "In this context, I would like to tell a joke that has a lot of message behind it. Let's go back to our teenage years. I find this age enormously important and desfines the kind of person you are going to be as an adult. Suppose I had a new girlfriend. The first thing my friends ask me is what she looks like. Analogously, if you were a woman and had a new boyfriend, the first thing your friends would ask you is what he does. What does that mean in the end? It means that men are expected to care, make enough money, and provide. Translated for the teen, it means "I want to make a lot of money now, and then I'll get a good-looking woman too." Following this principle roughly. If we take a closer look at this joke, we see that the man is under pressure to make money. He will look for opportunities to generate this money and more. And if you want to make a lot of money, you will stop selling your time and try to become an owner of an asset like a company. Entrepreneurship means a lot of stress. The woman, on the other hand, doesn't feel pressured to pay the bill on the next date or drive an awesome car. Her job gives her the opportunity to maybe take care of other things or pay attention to your appearance. Possibly that then shows up in job applications and in the areas where women or men are more involved."
You've already mentioned such important points. That means, if I understand you correctly, it's not primarily a lack of confidence in women's economic and innovative abilities on behalf of the investors, but rather that women need to be more confident?
Saygin Yalcin: "I can prove this to you. I have about 60,000 business plans in front of me. I can see exactly who is applying. After all, it's free to apply and free to listen to me. And then I see that not even 1% of the applications are sent by female founders. That's nothing at all. So it's also no wonder that in the end a male applicant gets the investment. If you have 100 applicants and 99 of them are male, what do you think the probability is that a male applicant will get the investment? It's not because of the investors - I would be surprised. I've never met an investor who says they wouldn't invest in a woman. I would always invest in the best person. If I think about it now, in the last ten, eleven years, interestingly enough, it's almost always been female themes that women have presented - for example, a tampon subscription model or various beauty products. I think women should care much more about topics that are not just completely female. Maybe they do that because they think they have a competitive advantage as a woman. But if women would apply in all topics, they would be much more visible and successful in many topics as well. So there's no biological explanation for it, it's more of a societal explanation, an explanation that may even be psychologically based, but not biologically based."
"I simply want to turn many more women into entrepreneurs."
Do these typical male and female professions still exist?
Saygin Yalcin: "I can tell you about my company. I have two women in top management. Both are relatively different, also in character. One is much more present, more offensive and takes action. She has 150 people under her and that's in Saudi Arabia. She also heads a department in Dubai. She manages it really well and is taken far more seriously than her male predecessor. Then I have a lady in HR, or she runs the HR department. She has a lot of empathy and sensitivity, which are also two very important qualities for her position. Partly, I think, too much empathy. The HR department not only has to hire, but also to terminate staff. Basically in capitalism, you have to understand that to answer your question: If you had to pay women less or get them cheaper for the same performance of men, every woman in capitalism would get the job. So it's not that women get paid less because men want to pay less. The bottom line is that the company needs to reduce costs as much as possible and maximize revenue as much as possible. That means accordingly, if the man wants more money than a woman and the two perform the same, then you hire the woman. This is actually logical. I think here again it is important to see if the women are applying for the position or if they say they want to work their way up to a certain role and anything above that means too much stress besides the responsibilities at home. Again, I personally would love to see more women apply there. So that means I don't have 50/50 of applications, and therefore the outcome can't be 50/50 either. I used to be a nurse to qualify for my medical degree. So it was kind of an internship. There have been almost only nurses there, and nurses clearly in the minority. You might think that hospital management is against men, but that's not the case. Proportionally more women apply and the result then shows accordingly. It is not the case that women per se are the better forces in nursing. By the way, my father is a veterinarian. And here, too, the proportion of female veterinarians is significantly higher. Perhaps because women are generally more fond of animals? One could assume. In human medicine, surgery, for example, is dominated by men. Now you could say that this is a big problem. In my opinion, you have to see what kind of interest or applications come in. And then you see the result. Wouldn't it be strange if nine men applied and one woman. And I hire the woman every time? That's not true either. And how do you go about it? Do you have to address it at all? I think what's much more important is to look at this dynamic socially. If a woman is oppressed at home, in the family, that's the problem. We need to ensure equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome. If there is 50/50 equality of opportunity at the bottom, then 50/50 can come out at the top. But if there is no equality of opportunity at the bottom, or the applications skew completely in one direction, then the outcome cannot be forced. Equality starts in the family. But forcing the outcome, that doesn't make sense. In Dubai there was a pretty funny experiment, trying to pass a law that says 20% of the employees of a company have to be locals. Honestly, very interesting when only 10% of the country is made up of locals. That's a good analogy."
Right. And not everyone is born with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Saygin Yalcin: "We're talking about those 3% who become entrepreneurs at all. So, most people are not entrepreneurs. 97% of people in Germany are not entrepreneurs. I wish there were many, many more."
Many women stop themselves from becoming entrepreneurs because they want to be a mother as well. We might call it a biological limitation. Do you think of a solution for this?
Saygin Yalcin: "This is a very important point. Almost every woman who works for us is a mother. The difference with men is that they can't be as active for 2-3 years - biologically. But that should not stop any woman from being entrepreneurial. It is these two or three years - it depends, of course, on how many children you want to have - where you have a disadvantage as a mother. Disadvantage means not being in the market during those years, or only being in it half-heartedly. Difficult, because we are constantly in competition. That might be a bigger issue in Europe, though. Here in the UAE, domestic helpers and nannies are much more socially accepted and also much more affordable than in Germany or Austria, for example. I think for a female entrepreneur this biological disadvantage can be solved better than in a salaried position for top positions. Working more from home, taking the baby to work with you, adjusting working hours, looking for support - all this is even easier to arrange in entrepreneurship. It's not going to be a big corporation from your living room now, but at least it's a way to bridge that phase."
What would you say women can learn from men and men can learn from women in business?
Saygin Yalcin: "I haven't done a study on this yet, so it's best if I just speak from my personal experience. What I have definitely learned from women is to listen more to my intuition. Honestly, I'm still learning. I was naive, just believing the numbers despite my bad gut feeling. Then I definitely learned empathy from women. One situation really got to me at the time and opened my eyes. I was in the office, it was quite late, already past 11:00 pm. A co-worker was still sitting at his desk. He said he had to finish something, although I told him to go home and not overwork himself. That same night he died of a stroke. I never saw him again. Deeply shocked, I went into a kind of robot mode. The HR director came to my room and informed me of the death. My response was to take care of everything else, the funeral, etc. This actually did not go over well at all, because it was about the person and not about any costs. I understood for the first time that something was wrong with me. And at the same time, that was the point where I started to allow empathy and compassion. I also learned the following and can say one thing: increasing professionalism in the company works best in a balanced team. And in my experience, women create this balance. What can women learn from me? To think entrepreneurially, that's my goal. I simply want to turn many more women into entrepreneurs. Please tell the dear ladies to apply more."
I will. Thank you for the motivation.
Saygin Yalcin: "We still have a significant ray of hope here. Or rather, an opportunity. Women buy a lot more books than men. I wrote a book on entrepreneurship. Maybe we could make sure that there are many more male and female authors writing books about business startups. And maybe then we can actually get women from that idea stage to startup."
