Apple begins Entrepreneur Camp to assist female app designers

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Apple is introducing a program to assist female app designers.


Balazs Gardi/Apple

Apple wishes to assist provide female designers an increase when it pertains to iOS apps.

The business on Monday revealed its brand-new Entrepreneur Camp that’ll assist ladies with an extensive coding laboratory, specialized assistance and continuous mentoring. It’ll bring ladies to its Cupertino, California, head office for 2 weeks each quarter to assist them with individually sessions for coding, marketing and other locations to effectively release their apps.

“It’s a fact that women are underrepresented in the industry,” Esther Hare, Apple senior director of around the world designer marketing and executive sponsor of Women @ Apple, stated Monday in an interview. “And there’s a big variation [in the] business owner world when it pertains to gain access to and financing. There’s a chance to do more and provide direct exposure to women-led services.”

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To be eligible, the company must be founded, co-founded or led by a woman — including transgender women — and must have at least one woman on the development team. The company also has to have a working app or prototype. That could include having an Android app but no iOS version, or having an idea for adding something like augmented reality to an app that’s already in Apple’s App Store, Hare said.

“This is really the first of its kind, one-on-one, code-level camp for women … to fast-track app development,” she said. 

There’s been more scrutiny this year about the number — and treatment — of women in technology. The #MeToo movement has brought to light sexual harassment and other issues women have faced, including by high-level executives at technology companies like Google. At the same time, technology companies have been trying to diversify their workforce, which includes boosting the number of female employees.

Apple itself has struggled to increase the number of women in its operations, with its last diversity report showing little improvement in the gender breakdown at the company. A year ago, the last time Apple reported its annual diversity numbers, it said only about a third of employees as of July 2017 were women, the same level as the previous year. 

Sending a signal

For startups, female founders face more difficulty than men when it comes to funding, training and support. Last year, women received $1.9 billion in funding compared to $83.1 billion for men, Apple said. But at the same time, women-owned business are growing over two times faster than the US national average, with women-led tech startups delivering a 35 percent higher return on investment than tech startups led by men, Apple said. It hopes its new Entrepreneur Camp will help address that problem.

“Because Apple is the biggest company and has so much power and voice, Apple stepping up for women sends this huge signal,” Kim Azzarelli, co-founder and CEO of Seneca Women, said in an interview. Her group works to advance women in the economy and advised Apple on its new program. 

“That’s as important as the skills that women in this program will gain,” Azzarelli said. “I think others will follow. When leaders like this step up and others follow, that changes the landscape dramatically.”

Apple is now accepting applications for its first session, which will start in January. The initial group will be composed of 10 companies, but it plans to hold a new session each quarter with 20 participating companies. 

Each company will send its female leader, a female developer and one other employee to Apple Park for the two-week intensive session. The participants will meet with engineers and executives for things like one-on-one coding help and will also meet women working at Apple.

“We really want to help female founders and co-founders … have access to Apple engineers and executives they’d never have access to otherwise,” Hare said. “And [we want to] go truly deep on code.”

The taking part business will get 2 tickets to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference the list below year and will be linked to other program alumnae for occasions and assistance. They’ll likewise have continuous assistance from Apple designer agents.

Companies from all nations are qualified for the Entrepreneur Camp, however all sessions in 2019 will be hung on Apple’s school. After the very first year of the program, Apple might likewise broaden the sessions to other nations, Hare stated.

“It’s really important to us that we keep women in tech once we get them,” Hare stated. “This goes a long way to showing this is important to us, and we’re doing something about it.”

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