The conversation also explored Anna’s own journey, from building her first startup to joining Minimist’s founding team, as well as the challenges of fundraising and the importance of making mistakes and learning from them.
Could you briefly tell us about how you got started as an entrepreneur?
I studied Business and Management and wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with this degree. At one point, I thought I’d actually become an accountant, until we had to do an internship under my study programme and one of my friends thought that we shouldn’t go for a traditional internship, but actually use this time to start a company and try things out instead. That’s when we started building our first company, and I’ve been in the startup ecosystem ever since.
How did you start Minimist?
I’m a late co-founder at Minimist, as my co-founders started the company in the summer of 2024 and I joined in January 2025.
Before that, I was working on a clothes community and marketplace in the second-hand fashion industry, Uptraded. We were having some trouble monetizing the business, since the swapping marketplace was non-monetary for the users, but we already had investors on board. It was actually one of these investors who recommended that I connect with the Minimist co-founders since, although we were doing different things, we might be a good fit.
When chatting with Stephan [Hofmann], one of my co-founders, it became clear that if we joined forces, the chances of success would be a lot higher. It was clear that the best solution would be for me to join Minimist, and the investors joined as well.
What challenge is Minimist trying to solve?
Minimist is trying to make second-hand the default choice by giving professional second-hand retailers the same operational tooling as firsthand commerce.
Right now, most of the second-hand inventory, about 93%, is offline because every item is unique and you only sell each piece once. It’s not really economically viable if you have to put half an hour of work into selling something like your cardigan, writing a description and making it look nice, because you can only sell it once and will have to do the same for each item you want to sell. Whereas with firsthand commerce, you could sell the same item a million times and it’s easier to hire a model and invest into making the item look nice.
Because listing things online takes too long and isn’t economically viable, second-hand retailers miss out a massive sales opportunity. With Minimist, we have built an AI-based software that helps you digitise items faster and sell them on multiple platforms, perform inventory management and make use of the same infrastructure as firsthand commerce.
What has been your personal experience with accessing funding as a woman entrepreneur, and how has it shaped your business journey?
I have been really lucky to find investors willing to support me on my entrepreneurial journey. At Uptraded, we had a Business Angel and an Angel syndicate that backed us and were quite recognized in this ecosystem.
We tried fundraising from institutional investors, but it didn’t work out super well. I do better with investors that have been mentors and have seen my journey. I’m not the kind of person that goes on big stages and gets everyone excited, but if you follow my journey you’ll see that I’m really committed to what I’m doing. These investors had already created a relationship with me and that’s why they invested. When we decided to discontinue the investor path for Uptraded, I used the rest of the funds that we had to pay back the investors, and now they’re also backing Minimist.
I now have a good network, including institutional investors, and when most of these people invested in Minimist, they already knew me for about three years or so. As for the ones that joined more spontaneously, this is what one of my male co-founders, Stephan, does. He's the one who goes to conferences and stages and gets people excited to invest within a day or a week.
What specific challenges did you face in fundraising that you believe your male counterparts might not have, if any?
Overall, it’s been a lot of work to build networks. It's not a fast thing for me, so it’s taken years to get people to invest in what I'm doing.
As a lot of other female founders, I do experience investors being more critical, not believing in what we’re doing, even if we have numbers and business models and everything ready. Conference settings and getting connected with investors works a lot better for my male co-founder than it does for me.
What role do you think investors can play in closing the funding gap for woman entrepreneurs?
They can play a huge role. It’s becoming better and better, there are more funds that are aware of this gap, even traditional funds, and also new ones exclusively investing in female ventures.
I’m in a bit of a bubble in the impact-driven, female-led startup space, so I know a lot of funds that invest in that kind of thing. However, if we take a look at the mainstream or if these impact-driven funds stop investing in a couple of years, it will be quite tricky.
I’m always surprised to see reports saying that female-led ventures perform better, when it still feels like investors are taking additional risks in investing in a female-led or co-led teams. There’s a lot of awareness work that needs to be done, as it needs to be clear that investing in diverse teams is not just a morally nice thing, it’s what makes sense financially. We need data, research and role models and I think there’s more of these out there.
Do you think there need to be more women investing as well?
It's a bit tricky, because we did get money from institutional investors and business angels, most of which were male, but I think the sector in general needs more diversity.
We're just starting to solve this problem. In past centuries, it had always been men earning good salaries, having exits and making enough money to invest. I think we're still at a stage in which there needs to be more awareness, research and communication to move the first people to act. I feel like we’re in the early adopter stage of changing this.
What advice would you give to aspiring female founders?
I heard so much advice from others, but you don’t just learn from advice, you have to do it. I still ended up doing so many of the things that I had been told about so many times wrong, but now I know them. So just do it, get yourself a good support network of mentors, family or friends that you can discuss things with and bounce ideas off of, even cry if it’s overwhelming. You have to fail to learn, so go out there, do it and learn by doing.
What were the highlights of the session?
I was positively surprised by the jury and the way they were asking questions. They were the same kind of questions you normally get, but they thanked us for presenting or told us that our work was important. There wasn’t such a big power imbalance, everything was more at eye level and I think that was the best part for me.
What motivated you to apply to participate in the matchmaking event? Were your expectations met?
I joined because while we are now closing a round, this stage is really the beginning of the next fundraising. Relationships need time to be built, so I’m expecting that one year and half from now, when we need to fundraise again, it will be good that I’ve met all these people.
There are funds in the jury that could be interesting for our Seed round and now they have seen my face. We're now connected on LinkedIn and maybe they’ll keep up with what's going on with Minimist so that in half a year or a year from now, I'll contact them, mention that we met at this event in February, tell them what's been happening and see if they are interested.
What would you say to entrepreneurs who may be considering applying for upcoming matchmaking events?
Get out there and pitch even if it feels a bit too early, because it’s never too early to start a connection. Make a good impression, tell them what you’re doing and see if people are interested. Maybe you can even find mentors, and these mentors might become investors in the future, so always apply, even if it feels a bit too early, and just use these opportunities.
About the EmpowHerMent Stories
WomenINvestEU is publishing regular stories on women entrepreneurs, women in leadership roles in the investment sector and representatives of wider organizations on gender-focused investing.
Thorough these stories, we are celebrating the achievements of remarkable women at all levels of the supply chain and inspiring you on your journey to raise capital or become a gender-conscious investor.
About the WomenINvestEU Matchmaking Events
As a part of its effort to expand the gender-focused investment ecosystem across Europe, WomenINvestEU is organizing online matchmaking events to connect women-led startups with members of its European Network of Gender-Conscious Investors.
Representatives of women-led startups, as well as startups with women in C-level positions, can apply for the chance to participate in these events through regular open calls. The selected startups will also receive pitching support on strategic topics, in order to prepare for their interactions with the gender-conscious investors in attendance.
Visit our Events page and stay tuned for upcoming opportunities.
Details
- Publication date
- 17 March 2026
- Author
- Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs