Whether as students, as workers or as entrepreneurs, women are still a minority in the technology sector. And it does not seem that they will stop being so if effective measures are not taken to put an end to the discrimination they suffer due to existing sexism within the STEM professions. Something that Lula de León, founder of Leemons and veteran entrepreneur in the world of technology, knows well.
In 2022, a study was carried out by the Social Observatory of the Foundation The Caixa which concluded that STEM does not attract female talent. According to his calculations, so only 16% of professionals in the sector are women and only 0.7% of adolescents are interested in studying a degree in these disciplines.
Also last year, the women entrepreneurs and workers of the Web Summit network completed their annual survey on gender equality in the technology sector, in which more than half claimed to have suffered from sexism during 2022. Despite the fact that 92% declared that they trust their professionalism, 70% feel that they have to work harder than their peers to prove their worth. Among the challenges that most worry women in the sector are sexist biases, the impostor syndrome and conciliation.
From hypertextual, we have talked about the challenges of undertaking in the technological world with Lula de León, CEO and founder of Leemons. A company that has put technology at the service of learning and whose development has revolutionized the educational field. De León tells us about her project with enthusiasm and the sector with more hope than reproach. This is what she has told us about her experience as a woman entrepreneur.
Hypertext: Let’s talk about Leemons. What’s your objective?
Lula de León: Leemons is a learning experience design platform. There is a total red ocean and apparently there are many, but in this case it does not look towards the world of educational platforms, but towards the world of the great digitization platforms of other types of industries. For example, Amazon with e-commerce or Salesforce with CRM. We intend to professionalize this industry, which until now has had a low level of digitization because it was considered that your target client, since it was so analog, did not matter. And the reality is that it does matter.
H: How did the project come about?
LL: The project arises during the health emergency, when four triggers come together and none of them is the business opportunity of COVID, curiously. The first is that I was studying Educational Psychology at the UOC. I have been teaching for twenty-eight years, but studying educational psychology was getting me closer to why I did some things well and others not. I was obsessed with my degree, I was earning 36 credits a semester, a wild thing. She was very invested in the learning processes and the impact of higher functions on learning and she was delighted.
On the other hand, I started helping my daughter to study with the platform they had at school and I realized that it is a real disaster, it is useless. The classroom had been brought to a screen with monitoring functions for the students and validation of the memorization of the content. The same thing that was done wrong in the classrooms, was done wrong there.
The third thing that happens is that I contracted COVID, in addition, with a variant that was neurological. Nothing was wrong with my lungs, but I would have tremendous pain crises. With that mix, I had a kind of crisis of purpose, which is the fourth trigger and which comes from the other three. That crisis had a lot to do with the fact that he felt that he was not contributing… Yes, he had been with a strategic design agency for 14 years that worked for large clients, making more money for those who have a lot of money.
So, I began to analyze alternatives to help my daughter, to propose to her at school. And suddenly I realized, 130 platforms later, that there was no alternative to the level of what I knew. I got into planning the project, looking for partners to take over my company, which was Diga33, and a year later, in May 2021, we founded Leemons. We started looking for the first round and, at a valuation of 1.5 million with a PowerPoint, we raised €300,000.
H: As a female entrepreneur, what specific difficulties have you encountered when starting up Leemons?
LL: The first is talent. Our company is technological and finding female talent in STEM professions is very difficult. Every time I post an ad, only male professionals reply. Not only because there are few women, but also because depending on where you are in your life, you don’t want to take the risk of working with a startup and this is a fact. Even if you pay market wages, like Leemons. In the end, the responsibility of my potential female employees is greater and they don’t always make the decision to go for a startup, which I perfectly understand.
That’s the first, female talent. That can be extended to diverse talent, because for me feminism is not restricted to just that. I don’t have any black person working with me and imagine finding a gypsy person, a person with functional diversity… Nothing. And I have a certain obsession with, later on, after this project, thinking about how to make those opportunities happen. But that is the reason for another interview.
The other is precisely what investment forums are like today. Yeah only 10% of the investment is in companies led by women, it is not because there are no companies led by women, because there are many. In addition, the valuation at which companies led by women are entered is lower. It is surprising that this continues to occur. And I don’t think it has to do with an established pattern of machismo, I think it’s something that happens under the radar. Except when a deep self-criticism is made, not even the forums where you can find investment realize it, they do not make this differentiation on purpose. But it takes a deep education to change it.
H: What have been the challenges of moving Leemons forward?
LL: I had a service company and that means clients, people, budget, doing a good job and billing. This cycle was very good for me. In this sense, a very important one has been the great burden of responsibility, which was something I did not expect. I feel responsibility with my team every day. But the fact that investors came in as friends & family on two occasions, and see that everyone has told me “we are here because we believe in your project”, it has created a lot of pressure on me. What I would most like is for these people to raise a return enough to pay off half a mortgage, I would go crazy with emotion.
But, at the same time, there is the tension that the box is going down. Because you don’t start getting paid on day one, you have to develop a product with other people’s money and selling is a mistake while you have to develop a product. This is a fact. So that balance is complicated and is one of the challenges.
the other is impostor syndrome. Leemons is open source, free for everyone forever. It’s on purpose. Now we are preparing another round, the third, to do the SAAS. But we have already shown that we can, we have made a product with a overfeaturing crazy It is not a vertical, it is a platform for the design of educational experiences. People enroll, classes are assigned, it allows you to create tours, it has an impressive library… There is a 360 communication system throughout the platform that collects data via xAPI. Of everything. So sometimes you get that imposter syndrome when you think, “Wow, if there are so many people doing it and we’ve thought they’re doing it right, why should we do it right?”
However, other times you have superpowers. When that company that found you through GitHub in Mexico arrives and tells you: “We’ve been doing benchmark and there’s nothing like Leemons.” That’s when you think: “It’s true, we’re doing it.” To undertake you have to be humble, because if you don’t hit a lot of cakes. You have to be clear about your dimension and the impact you can have on society. But these highs are great and you believe it. For me the most difficult thing has been that, fighting against the impostor syndrome and handling well the responsibility of having to return a return.
And learn everything that is not design. I am a designer, but I have had to learn to pitch, to reduce a wonderful idea to a line, to enter the sites knowing that I am not going to get anything, but that it is a practice…. That has been the most difficult for me.
H: The business sector can be hostile, have you ever felt uncomfortable or had the impression that your work was undervalued?
I have been in the sector for a long time, a lot. Sometimes, when they tell me “you are a reference” it makes me feel ashamed that I’m dying. Many women say the typical phrase “I have never felt machismo.” But as you close that door, you are closing it in the face of those who come after you, to whom you will not listen when they tell you “I have felt bad, I have felt uncomfortable, I have felt belittled”.
My position is comfortable now, but not twenty-five years ago. I was the one from user experience who sat down with the computer scientists and when I went to a client they asked me why I hadn’t put on a shorter skirt. They have been very tough, very complicated situations. I have also suffered the famous mansplaining. Explaining something complex and the person next to you explains it again and everyone says “ahhh”, because, of course, I speak a woman and there is no simultaneous woman-man translator.
It happens to me less and less, I see a much more conscious environment around me, many men who make an effort and say “I have been culturally tarnished by structural machismo and my role is to change this situation.” And, on the other hand, I see a current of denial, that this doesn’t happen anymore. And it is not true. Yes, there are situations where I still see women around me who feel bad. That is the moment to open your mouth, when you no longer feel bad you cannot stay and watch.
H: What changes do you think could improve the world of entrepreneurship?
LL: The question of the quota is criticized a lot, “I don’t need a quota to be there”. And I always debate that the question of the quota is not for the person in her individuality, but for the group, in this case for women. Because? Because the moment you don’t need that, you’re already on the side of privilege. When I talk about privilege I always think, what can I say, that I am middle-class white and I was born in Spain and I have economic independence? That is the privilege.
The most important part for me is education, there is still a lot to re-educate and remove the cross from things like the quota. If I fight to try and get a female programmer in Leemons and I don’t get it, the fact that I stop implies that there will be female programmers on the other side who are killing themselves twice as hard because I haven’t tried harder. If, as a businesswoman, they take away my privileges for not having a quota of hired women, I sign that they do so. Because then I will make an effort or hire someone who will make an effort to cover that quota with the profiles I have and the rush will not kill my purpose. This is throwing stones against my roof, but that roof makes us very comfortable and it cannot be.
You have to think that this sensitivity that a hiring woman can have is good for everyone. My service design principal, before hiring him, told me “we’re looking for a baby” and I told him “I’m going to hire you anyway.” But many women in that case would not have told me. That sensitivity is good for everyone, it is not a sensitivity only towards women. If we looked at it from that side, maybe feminism wouldn’t be so scary.