Women & Money London event: Women Investing In Women
Last week we gathered an amazing group of women in London willing to share practical advice, ideas, knowledge on fundraising, being a female investor, investing in female-led businesses, running a business, pitching to an investor and so much more.
It was a full house and we enjoyed every minute of it. Because Women Investing In Women was not just another business event, it was a supportive networking event where women came to connect, help and support one another. And you could feel it in the atmosphere!
When planning our events for the new season, we wanted to start with the events series focusing on Women & Health and Women & Money because female health and money still remain taboo in our society and women are often left out of the conversation when it comes to money related topics.
We decided it was time to start talking and acting on these undeniable facts:
Only 1% of the UK venture capital is invested into all-female founding teams. (Source: British Business Bank)
Women launch businesses with 53% less capital on average than men. (Source: The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship)
Only 13% of senior people on the UK VC investment teams are women while 48% of them have no women at all. (Source: British Business Bank)
We were lucky to be joined by our wonderful speakers for a positive and educational discussion, followed by Q&A. We do hope you found it useful and massive thanks to our speakers for sharing their valuable insights and knowledge with all of us:
Anya Navidski, Founding Partner at Voulez Capital
Anya is the Founding Partner at Voulez Capital – Europe’s First VC fund for female founders – providing Seed and Series A capital for high growth businesses with female founders. Having started her career with the likes of Goldman Sachs, PwC and NERA, she became an unrepentant entrepreneur, with almost twenty years of experience building businesses in multiple sectors and geographies, from running a £250m renewable energy venture and founding an incubator for social impact businesses, to turning around multiple tech ventures on behalf of investors. She has advised a European government on setting up and execution of an innovative “SME Champions” fund, acted as an advisor to JP Morgan in the area of renewable energy and innovative funding instruments and was a Director of the INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship. Anya is an Investor in Residence at Google for Startups, the winner of the Women in Finance “Specialist Investor of the Year 2019” award and has been featured in many publications, including the Financial Times, Techworld and by the BBC.
Karen Stenning, co-founder of HERmesa
With a passion and commitment to diversity and equality, Karen has set up several initiatives that tackle and confront matters related to injustice and to create a fairer world. In 2015, Karen set up Absolute Alchemy, with the main objectives of the organisation, to bring together communities and partner with impact organisations to create change and take positive social action on societal and environmental issues. In 2017, Karen joined the Hatch team as Manager of the Female Founders Accelerator programme, assisting women entrepreneurs to build on their existing businesses and develop a community of female leaders. Whilst working with the female entrepreneurs, she saw an opportunity for the need for more female investors in the investment marketplace. The underlying belief is that if more women had the self-confidence, the skills and the know-how to invest in early stage businesses, then they will hopefully back more female-led businesses. With that in mind, she set-up HERmesa with Marla Shapiro in 2018.
Deepali Nangia, early stage advisor and investor
Deepali Nangia is an angel investor and early-stage advisor to both tech and non-tech startups with a focus on female enterprise and social impact. Deepali has been invested in the UK ecosystem for the last five years and has a portfolio which includes LiveBetterWith, PensionBee, Adia Health, Polipop, and Nadine Aysoy. She currently runs her own advisory business out of which she supports startups with investor readiness and fundraising guidance. Deepali is a mentor at Zinc.VC, Imperial Enterprise Lab, Imperial WEInnovate (women in tech) and has judged many competitions at Imperial MBA/MSc, London College of Fashion, Top 100 Asians in tech etc.
Lu Li, founder and CEO of Blooming Founders
Lu Li is the founder of Blooming Founders, a platform that leverages the power of networks to help early-stage female entrepreneurs and diverse teams succeed. Blooming Founders runs popular events and an award-winning co-working space in Shoreditch that give our members a competitive edge in building and growing their businesses. Lu has also published the book Dear Female Founder which contains 66 personal letters of advice written by female entrepreneurs from 20 countries. It is globally available on Amazon and Kindle. In her previous corporate career, Lu has launched FMCG products for Procter & Gamble across Western Europe and has worked on several consulting projects for McKinsey, BMW, and T-Mobile.
Thank you all for coming and big thanks to WeWork Labs for hosting us in their offices at 70 Wilson Street.
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We always welcome new members to our community, so If you would like to participate at our events as a speaker, moderator, partner or sponsor company, please get in touch at hello@womenofwearables.com!
This blog was written by Anja Streicher, Chief Marketing Officer of Women of Wearables. She is passionate about women's health, supporting women in business and is still trying to figure out how to balance motherhood and business.