The Reality of Being a Female Entrepreneur

Nwabisa Mayema has built and exited one business, and founded a second one built specifically around a different theory of growth: that women build businesses better together than alone. Her journey from “self-employed” to founder offers a genuinely useful account of what changes between a first business and a second.

Starting a business before “entrepreneur” was even the word

Mayema started her first business in 2005 with business partner Abdullah Verachia, at a time when “entrepreneur” wasn’t yet the common term, people simply called it being self-employed. “I’d decided that being a humanities graduate would render me unemployable,” she says. Over a decade, the pair brought in a third equity partner and built a business that employed a meaningful number of young South Africans, before Mayema negotiated a cash buyout. “It was then I realised that I had lived the life of an entrepreneur: started a business, grew the business, pivoted the business and exited the business.”

What the first business taught her about how women build

Reflecting afterward, Mayema noticed a pattern: women tend to approach growing a business, and themselves as entrepreneurs, as individuals rather than leaning on a collective. That observation directly shaped her second business.

Building nnfinity around social capital

Mayema founded her second business, nnfinity, with business partner Nicci Stewart, built around a specific question: how do you grow women-owned businesses by deliberately leveraging relationships and networks rather than going it alone? nnfinity delivers training and consulting services while connecting clients to each other and to global opportunities.

A squad is not the same as a network

Mayema draws a sharp distinction between the two. A network exists to drive value within a community, useful, but transactional. A squad exists to let its members be authentically imperfect together, to laugh, cry and celebrate wins without performing professionalism the whole time. Alongside two friends based in Uruguay and Serbia, she co-created She Rocks Global, a community built specifically around that second, more personal kind of support.

Globalising as a way to manage risk

Mayema deliberately builds relationships with women entrepreneurs outside South Africa, treating an international network as insulation against local economic shocks. “My South African experience is seen as a valuable asset when it comes to collaborating and co-creating with colleagues from abroad,” she says, and the outside perspective it provides has repeatedly helped her see local challenges more clearly.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the core difference between starting a business in 2005 versus later?

Mayema notes the tools and language of entrepreneurship have changed dramatically, but the difficulty of standing out, rather than simply starting, has increased as more people enter the space.

Why did Mayema build her second business specifically around collective support?

Reflecting on her first business, she noticed women tend to approach entrepreneurship individually rather than collectively, and built nnfinity to directly counter that pattern.

What’s the practical difference between a professional network and a support “squad”?

A network trades value within a community on a fairly transactional basis. A squad exists for authentic, unfiltered support, less about opportunity, more about sustaining the person doing the building.

Building it with others, not alone

Mayema’s core lesson travels well beyond gender: a first business teaches you what entrepreneurship actually demands, and a second one is the chance to build it deliberately around what you learned, including who you choose to build it with.

Originally published in July 2019. Updated September 2026 to sharpen this piece’s focus on Mayema’s business-building and exit journey specifically, rather than repeating ground covered elsewhere on the site. Her core framework remains current.