As a woman in the startup community, Dalia Lasaite says she hasn’t encountered any serious obstacles due to her gender, and even suggests the opposite: “Starting a company is always hard, whoever you are. But I find that women actually get more visibility and stand out easier as the tech community is made of men – so this is the advantage of being a woman entrepreneur.”
Lasaite got into entrepreneurship in 2007, right after finishing her studies. After a bit of brainstorming co-founded the ride sharing website Geogoer, which seems to have closed down. At this time she was only working on the project part-time while simultaneously starting to work at an asset management company. But after playing around with that project for a while, the team got an investment from the Difference Engine accelerator, and Lasaite quit her corporate job.
In March of 2011 Lasaite got together with team members from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at Garage48, where they hashed together the first prototype and business model behind Campalyst. From there they followed a smooth progression thorough startup programs while simultaneously gaining more traction. First they participated in from there moved to Startup Sauna, and then was named a winner of Mini Seedcamp New York.
“If we focused on our local market in Latvia, the company would have been dead by now,” commented Lasaite in our article on the Campalyst story. “If you stay at home, you won’t see the full potential of your business. Be present in the market you want to sell. You can’t sit in Riga and sell globally, especially at the early stages. You need to be physically present in those markets to make things go faster.”
For any tips to women looking to start a company, Lasaite says “Just do it 🙂 People will reject and criticize you constantly, but this is because you are starting a business, not because of your gender.”
