Fundraising Stories with Female Founders

Join Julia Elliott Brown, Founder & CEO of Enter the Arena as she sits down with Nicola Piercy, the Founder of Stripe and Stare, the world's most comfortable knickers sustainably sourced from trees. Nicola shares her life as a serial entrepreneur, from founding Stripe and Stare with co-founder Katie Lopes to getting £3.6million in investment. Whilst gaining angel investment, Nicola experienced a d...

Being new to the world of investment, Lisa mapped out local experts in the North East of England that could fill certain knowledge gaps. It was after discovering who could add value to the business that she “accidentally” found her Angel investors and went on to successfully close her round with £225K of funding. Listen to Lisa’s investment journey to find out what she learned along the way and he...

Like many women starting businesses, the motivation for Rebekah Brown’s entrepreneurship, MPowder, was in response to her own experiences and spotting a gap in the market. She was struggling with a multitude of symptoms during perimenopause and felt there was barely any information on how to deal with it. Since then, Rebekah has listened to the stories of many women to understand midlife better, l...

Being an entrepreneur is an incredibly turbulent journey. Polly McMaster is the founder of modern luxury workwear brand, The Fold, and she’s been experiencing the highs and lows since 2011. As Polly says in this episode, “that's something you have to have your eyes wide open to, when you go into it”. So how did Polly approach her fundraising strategy and stay sane throughout the process? All is re...

Biscuit Tin won the COVID response competition from Innovate UK, being one of 800 out of thousands of applications which gave the business runway through the pandemic. With no marketing budget, Sheila used partnerships to get the business to market and has been on Dragon’s Den which has certainly helped with PR and awareness. She used the media opportunity to cleverly run the true investment campa...

No investors wanted to “touch the business with a barge pole” fourteen years ago, when the company was started by Cindy, due to fear of being associated with SexTech. However, Cindy saw an opportunity in the market. She feels sex is essentially a recession-proof industry and the niche of “socially acceptable” sex, which normalises it and allows people to publicly share sex and advocate for this is...

Katy secured a pre-seed funding round from several angel investors. She remembers hearing from multiple people “That's not possible" and is really glad she didn't listen to that advice and instead pushed to get on board the right angel partners that fully believed in the vision. The relationships Katy has built have been fundamental to the success of the business - with the next round of investmen...

As digital nomads, Vivi and her co-founder had the ambitious goal of building a global empire. With Vivi being from an investment banking background, she had some financial skills, but starting a business was a whole new challenge. It’s why being humble is core to the culture of the business now, and not knowing everything is okay. The co-founders started with £60K to bootstrap their company which...

Lucy started raising for Loanhood by building a rewards-based Crowdfunder and receiving a grant from NatWest. This helped establish the brand’s community and opened their eyes to the crowdfunding ecosystem. After some questionable advice, they tried to raise £400,000 from VCs who, from the get-go, said, "No, you're not ready for this. You haven't got any traction”. The founders also wanted to crow...

Stamena’s co-founder is her daughter, which occasionally means sparks with their differing yet complementary approaches to business. The first thing they did was research the market, to validate their idea and strengthen the vision. Then they found a shop to rent and purchased stock but just before the agreement signing, the owner pulled out. At this point, they were bootstrapping and got a small...

Linda had no experience in raising investment before starting the company, but luckily, her manager at Microsoft become Spinview’s chairman and championed the business, which helped elevate Linda. He advised her on how to go about doing a pitch deck, standing in front of an investor, and what kind of things they were looking for. This valuable support she received made a huge impact on the success...

Vineeta founded the company in 2021 after 15 years in drug development in major pharmaceutical companies and is a co-inventor on 13 granted patents and 4 filed patents. Biotech start-ups like Vitarka Therapeutics need funds for research and development from the get go and Discovery Park Ventures invested £150,000 as part of a seed round. More recently, Vineeta raised over 500,000 dollars of invest...

Abbie launched the business in 2016 with her co-founder and sister Maizie, with Abbie managing design and Mazie heading up the brand. The sisters grew up in a family lingerie manufacturing business with their mum as a successful entrepreneur which was understandably inspiring. However, with the family’s successes came some pressure for Beija to be profitable and get to a good place - fast. Beija i...

When Gabi overcame her fear of the ocean, a love of the ocean emerged, so the inspiration behind the brand was born. Being out of your depth is a common part of entrepreneurship! By taking a different approach to developing a product, and beginning with storytelling, Love Ocean differentiated itself in the kids’ bath product market.  Gabi has raised over £600K from a mix of crowdfunding and friend...

Alexandra needed investment early on to launch, buy stock and begin marketing. Interest from family and friends led to her first round of £50K. Freedom Underwear launched in 2020 and Alexandra went for a second raise 6 months later. She realised the responsibilities as founder change as soon as you’ve launched from making bras… to finance, ops, and everything in between. Finding investors to commi...

They both felt strongly that the current offering isn’t fit for purpose and wanted to create sexual wellness products to address the problem. They went about starting the passion project with thorough market research and surveyed 2,000 women on sexual health and buying habits. Funding the business as two female entrepreneurs and Farah being from a Bangladeshi Muslim background, came with an array...

Before starting up Flytographer, Nicole was happy in her global marketing job at Microsoft, but had the idea and simply couldn't shake it. What started as a side hustle has grown into a global business, selling over $20 million in photo shoots and capturing millions of priceless memories. There was an inflection point for Nicole when she needed to make a decision - to take the leap from side hustl...

She started her fundraising journey with a friends and family round, which she found difficult, conceding, “it was horrible asking for money”. Gayle was repeatedly told by investors that she wouldn’t get investment as a single female founder and needed a co-founder. Since then, she realised through a “baptism of fire” that this isn’t true. Gayle is fully capable of succeeding and taking the sustai...

Since 2017, terrible* has worked with 500+ creators, who’ve used their data and technology to manage their entire merchandise supply chain, helping them generate five times more revenue and 50% more profit than they would anywhere else. As a female founder, Tersha experienced every single fundraising horror story: being asked out on dates by investors, constantly interrupted and undermined mid-pit...

Yang previously worked for a VC fund and realised as an entrepreneur, the tables were now turned. Seeking VC investment was the plan after a successful Kickstarter campaign landing JustWears £150,000. But, without ‘enough traction’, VCs just weren’t ready to invest. In hindsight, Angels were the better route as their expertise and passion for supporting entrepreneurs made Yang grateful to have gon...

They now have a team of over one hundred staff, 15 retail stores and a thriving international online business. Krisi always dreamt of having a direct to consumer model and brick and mortar stores and vehemently believes it's all about building the business you truly want. Even if that means turning down lucrative wholesale deals from supermarkets like they did. Krisi has learnt a thing or two abou...

Priya Downes is the Founder of Nudea , a sustainable underwear brand creating beautiful designs focussed on fit, comfort and looking great. The digital-first brand has grown exponentially since it started in 2019, acquiring over 15,000 customers and generating half a million pounds in revenue in the process. Priya has raised £750K so far from angel investors after self-funding to launch the brand...

Adventure Tours UK was initially self-funded whilst Claire focused on building the brand through partnerships and PR trips that told a story and made it clear they were “going places”. With immense support from a business mentor, they went out and successfully found investors who really understand their goal to firmly stamp the UK onto the adventure travel map. Then, Covid hit in 2020 and travel w...

Martha started the brand on a shoestring budget and grew it to 7 figures with no external investment. She recently raised £220,000 through crowdfunding for the first time. With an amazing community behind the brand, they were fully funded in just two days with no lead Angel investor money. Incredible! Seeking investment is no longer something that makes Martha feel daunted and she’s excited to do...

Virginia Gardiner is the founder, CEO and inventor of Loowatt, a waterless toilet addressing the fact that 40% of the world doesn’t have a toilet, and the rest of us are using solutions that aren’t sustainable. Virginia has been on quite a journey. She started the business as an engineering and humanities graduate with three male co-founders who came from experienced corporate backgrounds, and who...