CITY OF HANNOVER AWARD "Women make the location"

© Ulrich Stamm

It is important to her that women are involved in the development of tech products, are more interested in technological professions and are ready to start their own businesses. This is why she is involved as a networker, mentor and speaker.

© Ulrich Stamm

The STADT-HANNOVER-PREIS honors successful female entrepreneurs in Hannover's economy. This evening, Lord Mayor Belit Onay presented the award at this year's business reception. Anja Ritschel, Head of Economic and Environmental Affairs for the state capital, hosted the award ceremony.

Market niche in app development

Mira Jago started developing apps at the Hanover start-up center Hafven in 2017. Two years later, she specialized in the Flutter framework, which appeared on the market in 2019. A framework is a collection of reusable software components that make the development of new applications more efficient. Flutter has the advantage of being able to program apps for different operating systems, e.g. Android and iOS (iPhone), using the same language. Mira Jago saw this as a major advantage because most business customers need apps for both operating systems. With her company Cuckoo Coding, she was the first agency in northern Germany to specialize exclusively in this technology. Initially, this was a risk because the success of Flutter was not foreseeable. In the meantime, this framework has become the industry standard.

New Work across national borders

The switch to the new framework was the basis for an increasing number of orders, including from large companies. Flutter developers were initially hard to find in Germany, so Mira Jago looked abroad.

Four people currently work at the company in Hanover. There are also ten permanent coworkers in Ukraine, Portugal, Sudan, France and Egypt. If required, the company can draw on a large network of other experts.

Cuckoo Coding has developed a system that allows participants to get to know, support and motivate each other in the spirit of "New Work" by working together remotely as a good collective across national borders. The buzzwords are "pair programming", "mentoring" and "internal hackathons". It is important in the system that all developers are in direct contact with the customers right from the start - "so that they can also see what they are developing for and for whom," says Mira Jago. Part of the company philosophy is that all developers take responsibility. She also stands for a "considerate business": it is important to her to build trust in order to unlock performance potential.

Networker, mentor and speaker

To further strengthen the female developer and start-up scene, Mira Jago is very active as a volunteer networker. She founded the "Google Developer Group Hannover" back in 2017 - parallel to the company launch. This is a monthly get-together for experts in software development. A year later, she launched the "Women Teachmakers". In this group, women from programming, IT and game development as well as data specialists, computer science teachers and experts in artificial intelligence exchange ideas on a monthly basis. Some of the participants volunteer together and support migrant women in learning programming, for example.

Mira Jago has also been working as a mentor for the "UX Design, Product and Tech" area in the "Hafven Impact Accelerator" for several years. There, start-ups with a focus on sustainability are supported for six months with various training courses in the development and further development of MVPs. MVP stands for "Minimum Viable Product" and means "smallest possible product". With an MVP, a start-up can test the market before going into real development. Mira Jago primarily supports start-ups that have a software product. Mira Jago has also supported "CreateF", a series about female founders who are coached, accompanied and filmed, in two seasons as a mentor. In addition, she is and has been active in several startup programs of hannoverimpuls, the joint business development agency of the city and region of Hanover.

Mira Jago is also involved as a speaker, particularly on digital topics. One of her aims is to get women interested in STEM subjects and start-ups, to program sustainably and to make Hannover more digital.

Interest in the economy only in the second step

Although she comes from a family of entrepreneurs, Mira Jago initially had no interest in business. Initially, she focused more on philosophy, writing and journalism. The "formal and masculine nature of business" initially inhibited her, but was later her incentive: she wanted women to have more access to the technological business world. In order to become a pioneer, she felt it was her duty to first learn programming herself, which she did at her father's company. Her goal was and is for women to help shape the future in this industry.

© Ulrich Stamm

In 2023, the City of Hanover Award "Frauen machen Standort" was aimed at women who are actively committed to promoting female specialists. The orientation of the company and the corporate culture should be based on the principles of "Corporate Social Responsibility".

Women from a wide range of sectors were able to apply. The prerequisite was that their company was based in the state capital of Hanover (LHH) and had already been successful on the market for three years. In short: the search was on for Hannover's female entrepreneur of the year 2023.

The STADT-HANNOVER-PREIS was awarded by a jury of representatives from politics, administration, trade unions and business organizations under the leadership of the Department for Women and Gender Equality and the Department of Economics / Economic Development of the LHH. The award ceremony and recognition of the prizewinner will take place at the City of Hannover's business reception.