In the race to mass adoption of web3, founders are creating communities for women as a safe space to develop knowledge and skills, network and find career opportunities. 

Here we profile four women leading the charge in Asia Pacific. 

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BlankTech - A safe space for women tech professionals in Singapore

BlankTech founders Tannie Nicholas-Tang (L) and Serena Lam

“Every event I went to I was either hit on, talked down to or men would just glance over and look the other way. I’ve grown up in tech. It’s my whole life. But it was a whole new extreme in web3.” — Serena Lam

It was this repeated experience that eroded tech product manager Serena Lam’s confidence when she moved to Singapore from Australia in 2022 and started exploring the web3 ecosystem. Unable to find many tech industry events where she felt safe, she decided to form her own. Her co-founder Tannie Nicholas-Tang, a self-described “introvert with imposter syndrome” similarly felt riddled with anxiety at web3 gatherings, “especially with a group of boisterous crypto bros talking a lot of big words I didn’t understand.” 

It was these uncomfortable situations that led these friends to create a different kind of space for women just like themselves. They founded BlankTech, a safe space for women professionals in the tech sector to gather. Formed late last year, the community runs business and wellbeing events for its members in Singapore.  

“We wanted to create a safe and comfortable space for women to ask questions or express things without having the fear of someone questioning their knowledge, expertise or lived experience,” Lam said. 

Nicholas-Tang added, “we found that the women who came to our events wanted to explore and build for web3, but were also feeling uncomfortable in different ways.”

The group has also since opened some of their events to male allies to break down perceived barriers and welcome diverse perspectives. 

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Building communities to unlock women’s place in web3

Nickie Scriven

“It’s not an equal playing field. It hasn't been in leadership, it hasn't been in business ownership. It's certainly not in VC investment. And it's certainly not a 50/50, or even remotely close to it, representation of women in the web3 space.” — Nickie Scriven

Nickie Scriven hopes that the community she founded, Chief MetaChicks, will redress this imbalance. Her member-based community, based in Australia, connects women with senior female leaders, who are experts across the full spectrum of starting and scaling a business. Known as the Chief MetaChicks, they coach, mentor and guide the members in their web3 journeys. 

“The idea is that they inspire, educate, and support women as they develop their business initiatives, enhance their leadership skills, and their own personal development, growth and confidence, quite frankly, because that's often what's missing,” Scriven said. “We want to build a community to help women see the potential in web3, because there is not enough women’s representation there now.”

Scriven has attracted both senior professional women seeking to improve their digital skills as well as younger founders in the space. The community experience includes education, events, coaching and mentoring, pitching and live feedback and exposure to virtual environments. 

“We are bringing women on the web3 journey and helping them understand the space, get familiar, get comfortable and see the opportunities,” she said.

Chief MetaChicks is planning its next phase of growth and is exploring an NFT collection and a presence in the Metaverse. 

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Giving women a chance to strive, to be more creative, get in touch with new knowledge, new innovation and new technology. 

Aulia Halimatussadiah

“If you hang out with the boys, you feel like an outcast, like you don’t belong. They are talking about the profit, it's all about the money. So when we add more women, I can see the web3 that I really connect with -  the community, the education, the technology, the innovation, So that's why I think adding more women in this will be balancing.” — Aulia Halimatussadiah

Aulia Halimatussadiah is a serial Indonesian tech entrepreneur in web3. Her latest venture Robomot is an NFT collection that offers credits for a set number of hours for skilled Indonesian online remote workers, trained by social enterprise Remote Skills Academy Indonesia, where she is CMO. 

After receiving her first computer as a kid, mastering coding as a teenager, then pursuing computer programming, Halimatussadiah has devoted her career to helping Indonesian girls and women in tech. Web3 has presented her with a whole new opportunity to evolve her educational offerings to her communities. 

She has a vision of a physical community space where women can “come and tinker, play around with technology, and talk to people on the same journey and receive one-to-one mentoring with mentors that will be invested in their success.” She feels that if the government or the private sector see value in funding such a venture, it will naturally bring more women into web3. 

“That is my utopian dream,” she said, “where women can enter a space and then do whatever they want for six months and create a product, getting all the support they need. And from that space, we can reach thousands of you new female founders.”