Short updates

Internet freedom under attack in Brazil

This week, Brazil's Supreme Court held a public hearing to discuss the constitutionality of Article 19 of Brazil's Internet Bill of Rights, which could impact internet freedom in Brazil. The cases question whether platforms like Google or Facebook can be liable for user-generated content without a court-mandated takedown order. This is not just about platform liability, but also about the standard of protection for online content. If the provision is declared unconstitutional, platforms would have to actively screen for offensive content or face liability. This could put political and minority speech at risk.

Two weeks ago we discussed the challenge to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the US and the potential global effects. When a country with high free speech standards lowers the bar, other countries may also start to question their own standards. Brazil could be the first to follow suit.

International Women's Month

This year, CTPI celebrated International Women's Day at the launch of the European Female Founders network. It was a two-day event at the European Commission with some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs on the continent. We now want to share a few of the data and resources we learned.

The panelists highlighted three of the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs still face today in Europe:

Difficulties for women founders to access the right networks to connect with the right investors and customers
- Access to the right networks is paramount, as they provide connections to financial backers (warm introductions are 13x more likely to result in funding than cold pitches) and early adopters.
- Women are underrepresented in such networks.
Deficit of women in STEAM fields
- Women are the majority of graduates in STEAM courses, but only 18% of ICT jobs are held by women.
- Only 6% of all innovative startups in Europe were founded by women and 15% by mixed founding teams (men and women).
Access to VC funding
- Female-led startups receive only 6% of all VC deals and only 1% of VC funding. That is: women-led startups are less likely to receive VC funding and, even those who do, are more likely to receive less.
- The numbers for mixed founding teams (women and men) are not much better. They received 10% of the deals and 12% of the funding.
- On the other side of the table, women account for only 15% of VC General Partners
- Questioning bias: “Men founders were often asked questions on their hopes, achievements, advancements and ideas (promotion questions) while female founders were questioned on safety, responsibility, security, and vigilance (prevention questions)" Diane Nevin - CEO, Grit International. Those founders asked prevention questions instead of promotion questions were 7x less likely to get funding.

Some interesting initiatives the panelist shared are:

Horizon Europe: the European Commission's research and innovation funding program has already invested 2.6 billion euros in women in Europe.
Women TechEU: the European Commission's program offers coaching and mentoring services, and targeted funding to female founders in DeepTech. Since its launch, the initiative had its original funding raised from 2 to 10 million euros.
Women2Invest: European Commission-supported program that aims to bring female STEAM graduates to venture investment careers.
Startup Stairway: European Institute of Innovation & Technology's program to bring female STEAM graduates to startup careers.
Rocket up: EIT program that supports innovative female-led startups.
Mentoring for women leaders: EIT mentoring program.
Prize for Woman Innovators
EIC Women Leadership Program
GRIT Female Network and GRIT Female Accelerator
SHE Network
Nordic Women in Tech Awards

Regulation and competition: The case of the Brazilian fintech ecosystem

Events such as the failure and rescue of Credit Suisse and the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank re-surfaces the old saying that prudential regulators should always favor banking concentration to improve financial stability, putting monetary authorities in opposition to competition authorities. In this paper, we want to switch gears and propose a framework to analyze monetary authorities' role in fostering competition. Then, we go through the case study of Brazil's financial system regulators and compare them with Brazil's competition authority's role and the importance of inter-agency cooperation.

Read the full article

Internet freedom, women's month, and Regulation and competition in the case of the Brazilian fintech ecosystem