UK House of Lords Launch
The Law Chronicle was at the UK House of Lords for the Female Founders Forum Report launch with the Rt Hon Caroline Nokes, UK Parliament Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, who gave a moving speech on the importance of female founders. The Female Founders Forum Report is an initiative which has been a joy for our CEO, Saffron Gilbert-Kaluba, to get involved in over the years as a female founder herself. This year’s report ‘Accelerate to Excel’ researches the progress women in business have made over the years and how astonishingly low equity funding remains for female-led startups.
Our report was covered by Hannah Prevett in The Times, where it displays how in the initial half of 2023, a mere 3.5% of the overall funding secured from equity investment deals supported businesses founded exclusively by women. This proportion is even lower than the 4.2% recorded in 2013.
Conversely, the majority of funding, accounting for 85.1%, was acquired by teams consisting solely of men. The remaining 11.4% was distributed among startups led by a combination of both women and men.
Just before our CEO stood to take this picture, Rt Hon Caroline Nokes had stated how it is imperative for these gender gaps to be closed in business - as with them the UK is missing out on an estimated £250 billion of revenue, if women were able to scale as much as men in business. Therefore, hopefully with reports like this positive changes can be made in the industry, with effective growth for female founders and the UK business landscape as a whole.
