Fundraising Stories with Female Founders

Kike Oniwinde is a Forbes 30 under 30, World Economic Forum Shaper, and has won three national pitch competitions. Kike has been a high achiever since she was raised in East London, throwing the Javelin for GB whilst crushing her grades. In 2020, she raised £900,000 through crowdfunding for her business, BYP Network, a platform that empowers and connects black professionals to each other and to co...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Tiffany Kelly, the founder of Beyond Bamboo. Tiffany has always been deeply passionate about the environment. She saw an opportunity for an online marketplace where consumers and businesses can source ethical and sustainable goods. This includes upcycled, restored and recycled as well as new products. Over two years in t...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Kim Palmer, founder of Clementine. Amidst a sudden onset of panic attacks at work, Kim Palmer discovered the power of hypnotherapy as a game changer for staying calm. As a passive option for busy brains, hypnotherapy provides a relaxed and accessible way to find calm and change habits. Realising that she could help women...

Jess and Lou Alderson have tapped a fresh niche in the online dating market using Myers-Briggs personality profiling for a perfect match. They've taken their market by storm and in a short time, managed to raise over £700,000 in investment. Launching in January 2020, the sisters have gone from strength to strength despite the global pandemic. With the goal of building a marketable product as quick...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Heinin Zhang, founder of YHangry. Heinin Zhang, Founder of YHangry, and her co-founder Siddhi Mittal recognised that people no longer entertain at home. In Heinin’s words “Millennials, as ‘Generation Convenience’, have killed the dinner party!” They established YHangry as a private chef service at an affordable price, of...

Hele Väärsi raised money early on after founding 9Plus1, when she and her co-founder were still at the idea stage. Bravely seeking investment so early on, Hele strategically contacted VCs who she thought might have an interest in the product. This strategy proved successful as Hele secured investment from Voulez Capital in 2020, a specialist VC for female-founded businesses. In this episode, you'l...

Anushi Desai started making snacks with popped lotus seeds as a side hustle whilst working as a management consultant at KPMG. She bravely handed in her notice with the “do it now or it might not happen” mentality and a sense of knowing it was time to do something else. Anushi and her co-founder self-funded to begin with, but as a product-based business, they needed investment early on. VCs offere...

Pip brought her background in marketing and technology to the table whilst her co-founder, Kate, brought knowledge of psychology and family consulting. Their blend of skills were a perfect match for scaling the market changing business. Pip is an angel investor herself so had insider knowledge of how investors operate and what they look for. She reached out to those known to have an interest in co...

After growing the business organically for the first few years, Jennifer found an angel investor who not only invested money into Stitch & Story but mentored Jennifer and supported her to raise further investment rounds. In 2020, to help fast-track growth, Jennifer went on the hunt for venture capital investment, and made sure she did her due diligence on potential investors to get the right fit....

Ashleigh founded Bagboard as one of three co-founders who had never raised or run a business before. They initially funded it pre-launch through a ‘friends and family’ round of £500K, before raising £600K via crowdfunding in 2020.  But the investment journey wasn’t easy. At the start of their crowdfunding campaign, they just weren’t getting the response they needed from investors. Why? Because the...

Mamamade was born in March 2019 and Sophie bootstrapped the business for around a year. Instagram was incredibly powerful in getting the word out and growing the start-up organically. Sophie didn’t let “perfection be the enemy” - brilliant advice from her husband to just get the product out there and refine afterwards. In 2020, at the start of lockdown, Sophie started raising investment via angels...

In 2020, Nicki raised over £150,000 of investment via crowdfunding to help her rocket fuel the growth of the brand, and she did it right in the middle of lockdown! Crowdfunding certainly isn’t a quick fix; it can be just as time-consuming as the traditional investment round, although it often happens faster. Nicki managed to juggle motherhood, run her business and raise investment all in tandem by...

Patricia and Randa met through a local Facebook group, showing how it’s possible to find business partners in unlikely places. They attempted a first round of investment early which didn’t work out because of the common investor feedback “We need to see traction”. They bootstrapped for some time, building the product and getting several retail customers onboard. After multiple successful rounds to...

Catherine started the business with her own savings initially, then got a start-up loan from Virgin which was useful, not only for the cash but for the help they gave her with the business strategy. Some entrepreneurs feel nervous about taking on debt, but Catherine believes in being relentlessly optimist. Before the cycling helmet launched, Catherine received a £150K investment from Angel investo...

 In 2017, from her parent’s home in Nottingham, Claire self funded the business and over two years grew her customer base. At that point, it was time to raise pre-seed equity investment via crowdfunding, totalling £85,000. Before Claire went through the crowdfunding process, she didn’t feel confident in herself. After going through the stringent checks Seedrs perform, Claire realised Laza Flora wa...

Joyce and Raissa began their entrepreneurial journey with few industry connections, after doing a Master’s at UCL in Technology Entrepreneurship, where they won an award that gave their new business a funding grant. By connecting with around 500 potential investors via LinkedIn, they managed to bring on five individual investors for their first round. They’ve now completed three funding rounds tot...

Merilee founded the business in 2014 and brought on board advisers. Their value was twofold: they invested and were experts in their own areas, advising on aspects of growing the company. She made the decision to raise multiple crowdfunds as opposed to taking a larger sum of money from VCs. Merilee highlighted that raising investment and selling equity needs to be a strategic long term decision. R...

The business started from humble beginnings when Stephanie discovered she had several food intolerances in 2015 whilst working with Kristina in events management. She began making home-made gluten and dairy-free lunches to bring into work. Realising they could turn these lunches into a business, friends Stephanie and Kristina launched Pollen + Grace. They self-funded the business from their home k...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Pip Jamieson, the Founder and CEO of The Dots, a professional network for people in the creative industry. Pip has raised £5.5m in investment finance in the last few years, with two major funding rounds and the platform has over half a million members. In 2009, Pip co-founded her first business in Australia, called The L...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Francesca Hodgson, the Co-founder and Managing Director of GoodBox, which helps non-profit organisations to take cashless donations, by providing them with contactless charity donation boxes, along with software to help them track, analyse and grow the amount of money they raise. Francesca worked as a graphic designer st...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Sarah Merrick, the Founder and CEO of Ripple, an innovative clean energy ownership platform. Sarah set up Ripple to enable household consumers to own their own source of clean power and transform the ownership of the UK's energy assets.  Sarah has worked in the wind energy industry for 19 years. Prior to setting up Rippl...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Julianne Ponan, Managing Director of superfood brand Creative Nature, a company that creates raw superfoods, snacks and food mixes suitable for everyone including those who are nutrition-conscious, vegans and those who live with a food allergy or intolerance. Julianne started her career in investment banking and was shor...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Sarah Henley, the Founder and COO of NextUp Comedy who started a comedy video subscription business three years ago to fill a much-needed gap in the video-on-demand industry. Previous to founding NextUp, Sarah worked in comedy for over a decade along with her three co-founder friends. Sara’s ultimate vision is to build N...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Savannah de Savary, CEO and founder of Built-ID, a proptech company which enables collaboration through innovative technology and empowers communities to have a meaningful impact on property development in their neighbourhood.  Savannah brought her idea to life by working on the technology platform whilst still being emp...

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Julie Chen, The Cheeky Panda. Julie Chen, The Cheeky Panda, thought of using bamboo as an eco alternative to using paper for creating toilet tissue. Why cut down trees when bamboo is sustainable and grows back every year? Julie went to her home country of China, where bamboo is in abundance and mapped out how to logistic...