Anne Cocquyt
About Anne Cocquyt
I'm the founder of the GUILD and GUILD Academy, a best-in-class program for first-time entrepreneurs to launch their businesses and decide on funding options. As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, I advise startup founders to help them gain the knowledge and the confidence to try new business models, innovate like a Silicon-Valley entrepreneur and choose the right fundraising path to grow a successful venture aligned with their values. I wrote a bestselling entrepreneurship book "DARE TO LAUNCH" to inspire first-time founders and help demystify the world of scalable and non-scalable businesses from a female perspective. To get where I am today, I brought a large amount of curiosity to everything I did in my career across three continents. I tried many things: From being an artist at a Swiss Christmas Market to selling my AI-powered HR software to tech companies in San Francisco. With each venture, I gained a few more insights that I love to share with entrepreneurs. My "Dare To launch" story starts with the woman who bought a red muscle car to drive down Route 66 and found herself in San Francisco married and as an investor in a consumer product company 2 months later and 2 years later sold that company. And that was just the beginning of a wild ride in Silicon Valley. Another story is about what I learned at Genentech's innovation team, funding startups, consumer trends, AI, BI and DEI solutions, doing due diligence, working with angel groups and accelerators. I love to share the secrets of female entrepreneurs who successfully raised funding through my programs. You can find their stories on the GUILD Show on Youtube. I like to translate examples of what worked into tactical advice for entrepreneurs to gain an unfair advantage when launching their company. I'm a huge proponent of gender equality in the startup world and build strong partnerships with other organizations' initiatives (e.g. the How Women Invest Fund and raising funding from FAANG companies to help propel more women into positions of power.) Thanks to my networks at Stanford, University of San Francisco, Berkeley, Y-Combinator, and the German Accelerator I know which methodologies work right now for starting companies. I was fortunate to invite hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors to the startup conferences I hosted. Their perspective is bottled in the GUILD Academy 8-week program to help others dare to launch. I would love to learn about your ideas and be a resource for you on your launch journey. Reach out to me at annecocquyt.com or apply to letsguild.com/academy.