At a glance, Dell-EMC’s female-focused virtual assistant platform called “Alice” seems very gender-biased. The first few thoughts that come to mind are:
- Why is there even one that is emphasised for female entrepreneurs? We are not talking about credit cards or services that cater to women with benefits that appeal to their female tastes. What does a virtual assistant that caters to women, supposed to look like and behave?
- Why can’t women entrepreneurs use what is already available out there?
These concerns were addressed to Dell and Circular Board at the global level. Circular Board runs the Alice platform while Dell is the tech provider.
What returned as response was that Alice was strategically coded with learning science in mind, and that women tend to learn differently than men. For the record, Alice’s software was designed by women entrepreneurs, as well.
The emailed response stated, “Rather than just “pinking” entrepreneurship, Alice aims to explicitly provide the resources that women entrepreneurs say they most need to grow in a format that works for them.
It goes on to say, “The product is designed for female entrepreneurs, but it’s not because we are trying to segregate males, it’s because the current startup ecosystem continues to cycle resources among a very small percentage of well-connected entrepreneurs, making it difficult for less traditional founders (i.e. working mothers) to navigate.”
The statement does eventually admit that there are certain targeted resources that are specific to women, including events and connections to mentors and investors that are interested in connecting with women founders.
The Circular Board, the first virtual accelerator for women entrepreneurs (and brains behind Alice), thought it was important to offer a platform to entrepreneurs to get access to the resources they needed from anywhere and at any time. Based on interviews and events with thousands of women entrepreneurs, Circular Board found that women tend to learn much better in a step-by-step framework, whereas men like to look at the big picture and drill down into details.
They also found that women want cultivated content that is recommended by someone else.
“The software team developed the platform with a gender lens, testing on women entrepreneurs and developing based on their feedback. It’s not “simpler controls”, but instead Alice pulls up information in more “female” friendly ways. For instance, the research showed that women want cultivated helpful content, recommended by others as opposed to long lists.”
While Alice was developed based on surveys of women entrepreneurs, what men entrepreneurs want and are looking for, did not seem to be taken into account. There was also no indication that similar surveys had been conducted for men to find out how they learn and what they would require as entrepreneurs.
That said, men are welcomed to use the Alice virtual assistant. Despite resources and algorithms that are curated for women entrepreneurs, their male counterparts could easily find value in the tools and advice offered by Alice and its partners.
