Additional Emerging Insights: Growing Demand at the Pre and Post the #SheFUND Journey

Beyond the six core findings, the interviews point to unmet demand at both ends of the entrepreneurial journey.

5.1 The Need for Earlier Entry Points

Beyond the six core findings, the interviews also point to growing demand for #SheDIDIT support at both ends of the entrepreneurial journey - evidence that directly informs Recommendations 3 to 5 below. The interviews point to two distinct but connected gaps. The first appears before formal coaching begins, among women who are interested in entrepreneurship but are not yet ready to enter a structured business development program. The second appears after graduation, among women who have already developed their businesses through #SheDIDIT and are now facing more complex challenges related to growth, professionalization, and scaling. Together, these gaps suggest that #SheDIDIT is increasingly serving women across a broader entrepreneurial continuum than its current program architecture can fully accommodate.

At the entry point, the evidence suggests that some women arrive with ideas, ambitions, or early informal activities that are not yet ready for the intensity of #SheMeansBusiness or the formal requirements of #SheFUND. These women may not yet have a defined business model, a clear customer segment, financial projections, or the confidence to present themselves as entrepreneurs. However, they are not outside the target group. They are often at an earlier stage of the same journey. Several accounts point to long and non linear entrepreneurial trajectories, in which women carry an idea for years before they are able to act on it. For these participants, the first need is not advanced coaching, but a lighter and more exploratory entry point that helps them test whether entrepreneurship is possible, legitimate, and worth pursuing.

This matters because readiness is not only a technical condition. It is also shaped by confidence, time, language, networks, family responsibilities, migration experience, and exposure to entrepreneurial role models. A woman may have a meaningful business idea but lack the vocabulary, structure, or confidence to enter a formal coaching pathway. Without an earlier entry mechanism, these women may either remain on waiting lists, delay engagement, or enter coaching before they are fully prepared to benefit from it. A pre coaching pathway could therefore function as a bridge between inspiration and structured entrepreneurship support.

Such a pathway does not need to replicate #SheMeansBusiness. Its value would lie precisely in being lighter, more accessible, and less demanding. It could include introductory workshops, peer circles, business idea clinics, confidence building sessions, storytelling events, or short modules on “first steps” into entrepreneurship. The objective would not be to produce a full business plan immediately, but to help women clarify their idea, understand what entrepreneurship requires, and decide whether they are ready to move into more formal coaching. In this sense, an earlier entry pathway would strengthen the pipeline into #SheMeansBusiness and #SheFUND by improving participants’ readiness before they enter the core program.

The strongest evidence is that the formal track explicitly requires a formed idea. One coaching participant:

“…when you want to start in the track, you already have your idea… you need an idea. You don’t have an idea, it’s like no go.”

One of the coaches confirms many applicants arrive before they’re ready:

“they feel very unsure about themselves. Sometimes they just started and they haven’t given their business idea enough thought and… enough time to develop even a little bit.”

The multi-year incubation pattern is well documented. One funded entrepreneur carried her idea for years before acting:

“I was thinking, it’s just weird that I would just start my own product… can I do it? It’s just funny, funny idea. But yeah, little by little, I just got crazy about that idea” — and lacked any entry point: “as a lawyer, as an expat here in Brussels, I didn’t have any network… I was at home with kids… I was just looking for places where I could learn about business.”

5.2 The Need for Post-Loan or Scale-Up Support

At the other end of the journey, a “scale-up” gap also emerges. Some women who have grown through #SheDIDIT eventually move beyond the needs of early stage coaching. They begin to face questions related to hiring, legal structure, investor relations, market expansion, operational systems, partnerships, and growth strategy. These are qualitatively different challenges from those faced at the ideation or early launch stage. Yet participants who reach this point may not find an equivalent level of support within the existing program structure. This creates what can be described as a “cliff edge” after graduation: women are supported to develop and formalize their businesses, but once they begin to scale, the available support becomes less clearly defined.

“As a community person, to be honest, … I wanted to be in contact with people making it.”

This suggests that the community serves early-stage entrepreneurs but less high-growth profiles, and that aspirational role models are a gap.

This post graduation gap is important because it affects the long term impact of the model. If #SheDIDIT helps women become more confident, visible, and business ready, some of them will naturally progress toward more advanced entrepreneurial needs. Without a structured alumni or growth pathway, the organization risks losing contact with precisely those entrepreneurs who could become its strongest success stories, mentors, ambassadors, and evidence of long term impact. Supporting these women is not only beneficial for the entrepreneurs themselves. It also strengthens the wider #SheDIDIT ecosystem by creating role models for newer participants and by demonstrating that migrant women led businesses can move from idea to growth.

A post graduation pathway could take several forms. It could include advanced mentoring, targeted expert sessions, peer advisory groups, investor readiness support, legal and HR guidance, or curated referrals to specialized external partners. The goal would not necessarily be for #SheDIDIT to provide all advanced services internally. Rather, #SheDIDIT could act as a trusted connector, helping alumni access the right type of support at the right moment. This would allow the organization to remain focused on its core strengths while still preventing high potential entrepreneurs from falling out of the support ecosystem once their needs become more complex.

The coaching waiting list is the clearest organizational signal that current demand exceeds available capacity. This should not be seen only as an operational pressure. It is also evidence of the relevance and credibility of #SheDIDIT’s model. Women are seeking access because the program addresses needs that are not being fully met elsewhere in the entrepreneurial support landscape. The existence of waiting lists therefore provides a compelling argument for investment in program growth, especially if expansion is designed strategically around the two pressure points identified in the study: earlier stage readiness and later stage scaling.

The strategic implication is that #SheDIDIT could benefit from articulating its work as a staged entrepreneurial pathway rather than as a set of separate programs. Such a pathway could include a pre coaching entry point for women still exploring their entrepreneurial identity, the #SheMeansBusiness core coaching journey for those ready to structure and develop a business, #SheFUND for those ready to seek financial support, and a post graduation or alumni pathway for entrepreneurs entering the growth stage. This would make the organization’s model clearer to participants, funders, and partners. It would also help #SheDIDIT communicate that it does not simply deliver one program, but supports migrant women entrepreneurs across different moments of readiness, launch, and growth.

This finding is therefore not only about unmet demand. It is about the maturation of the #SheDIDIT ecosystem. The organization has created enough trust, visibility, and value that women now approach it from different stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Some need a first safe step into entrepreneurship. Others need advanced support to scale what they have already built. Responding to both needs would allow #SheDIDIT to deepen its impact, strengthen its pipeline, and build a more continuous support architecture for migrant women entrepreneurs.