Nicola Piercy, Stripe and Stare - Securing investment for sustainable knickers
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
2M ago
Vicky Whiter acquired and transformed a struggling heritage dry cleaning business after she saw potential where others saw challenges. The business had a stellar reputation but suffered from poor marketing and a lack of awareness.  She initially self-funded and had friends and family invest while she replaced physical locations with lockers. She wanted to solve the challenge she had faced in her busy corporate career: the dry cleaner never being open at the right time or place. Vicky brought on Clare Gill, to take charge of all aspects of marketing, and help take the businesses to the ne ..read more
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Lisa Eaton, Fabric Academy - The Power of Advisors
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
5M ago
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 her tips that might help you with your own fundraising endeavours. In this episode, you’ll discover: The value of having advisors from the start Why you should think of raising investment as a sales pr ..read more
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Rebekah Brown, MPowder - Raising Money for Menopause
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
6M ago
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, launching several supplements to help enhance the stages of menopause. Rebekah credits the co-creation community as the driving force behind the success of MPowder. As consumers feedback and share thei ..read more
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Polly McMaster, The Fold - Don’t Fold under pressure
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
7M ago
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 revealed as she talks to our founder and CEO Julia Elliott Brown about her experiences. In this episode, you’ll discover: Why a simple approach to raising investment is key  How to deal with the i ..read more
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Sheila Hogan, Biscuit Tin - Raising For DeathTech
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
9M ago
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 campaign in parallel and raised from a mix of angels and VCs. Since then, Sheila’s been on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, with a large US investor pulling out at the last minute, the UK economy cra ..read more
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Cindy Gallop, MakeLoveNotPorn - Funding a real sex website
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
10M ago
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 needed in society. Cindy managed to get one private angel investor to invest $3 million. Things are slightly better now than 14 years ago thankfully, but there have still been many challenges due to ..read more
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Katy Cottam, Luna Daily - Funds, vulvas, knees and toes
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
10M ago
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 investment of £2 million propelling them to new heights alongside stock financing of £1 million. While stock finance is not for everyone, Katy’s deal structure has been a perfect marrying of both funding types ..read more
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Katy Cottam, Lunar Daily - Funds, vulvas, knees and toes
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
11M ago
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 investment of £2 million propelling them to new heights alongside stock financing of £1 million. While stock finance is not for everyone, Katy’s deal structure has been a perfect marrying of both funding types ..read more
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Vivi Cahyadi Himmel, AltoVita - Investor herd mentality
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
1y ago
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 allowed them to launch a website, start marketing and recruit internal developers. Then they secured £300K through family and friends. AltoVita went on to raise £1.6m from angel investors globally. K ..read more
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Lucy Hall, LOANHOOD - Failed your investment round? Go again
Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs
by Julia Elliott Brown
1y ago
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 crowdfund via Seedrs as the business has a a major community aspect, so it made sense to go this route. They got commitment and went live in a way that felt poorly timed before several investors pulled ou ..read more
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