Every entrepreneur can reel off sombre statistics about the likeliness of a start-up failing, not least because their family and ex-colleagues probably frequently remind them of the odds. For women entrepreneurs, who secure just 3.5% of UK funding for start-ups, it’s even harder.
But that stat is being challenged by female founders of successful scale-ups who are sharing the secrets that helped them get over the early hurdles, via women-only entrepreneurial business networks.
“In the early stages of a start-up, you’re trying to be a jack of all trades,” says Kate Prince, founder of £10 million-a-year collagen brand Ancient + Brave. “You want to be resourceful but sometimes you hit a dead end, and you don’t have the time or money to pay a third party – so having a network to ask questions to is a brilliant thing.”
Prince is one of over a thousand members of Buy Women Built, established in 2022 by Coffee Republic founder Sahar Hashemi. “We set out to build a movement to get consumers behind women-built brands to help fill the £250 billion hole [identified by a government review] in female entrepreneurship in the UK economy. What has been extraordinary is the community that has morphed into being behind this movement.”
“We started with three founders I knew in a Whatsapp group - it grew by word of mouth.” BWB now encompasses female-founded start-ups and scale-ups with a collective turnover of £1.6 billion and 33 million followers on social media. “It’s been incredible to see the magic of a peer-to-peer community, the amount of sharing that goes on, and support,” Hashemi adds. “It’s a safe haven for them to vent and share vulnerabilities. Members have also been collaborating like crazy, doing joint promotions, events, and commercial collaborations. Over 100 brands have adopted our kitemark on their packaging, with hundreds more using it digitally.”
BWB, Prince adds, “has a spirit of pure collaboration that’s pumped through the network. There’s no ulterior motive; just a joyful energy where everyone’s helping each other out. People ask other founders questions, anything from ‘do you know a great lawyer?’ to ‘where’s the best packaging supplier’ to ‘have you ever launched a product in Singapore?’ – it’s a quick and easy way to accelerate your growth.” With Ancient + Brave having enjoyed an average 85% surge in turnover every year since its 2018 launch, Prince says she’s now shifting from asking the questions to answering those of other founders.
Lizzie Carter, founder of curly hair care brand Only Curls, agrees that the community element of BWB has helped fuel her business. Carter invested £500 of her savings into “a very small run of hair towels” in 2016, marketed via Instagram; she hit £13 million turnover last year. “Scaling up, my business is at a stage where I need support and advice on so many things that are completely new to me,” she explains.
“Investment, legal contracts and staffing – BWB is an amazingly supportive community made up of inspiring women offering help to each other. It’s a place where I can go for advice from those that have paved the way before me, or chat with those going through the same obstacles, without any judgement or agenda. I also love being able to share any knowledge I have gained from building Only Curls to help others.”
Carter concedes being an entrepreneur is “incredibly lonely. I have no friends or past colleagues that are entrepreneurs, so being part of a network and meeting other entrepreneurs has really helped improve my confidence, especially in decision making.” She advises other entrepreneurs to meet as many people as possible. “Never overlook the value of networking. I spent the first four years of my business – partly due to Covid – building Only Curls behind my laptop. Meeting other people in similar roles as me, along with investors and advisors, has seriously opened my eyes to what potential there is to achieve, and ultimately set my aspirations for the business even higher.”
Prince agrees: “For 18 months, I was sitting at my kitchen table doing everything alone. It’s very lonely. Try to give yourself some boundaries, working all hours is not the healthiest, but be aware too that when your business is doing well, you’ll have to park other parts of your life in hope that it will all come back together at some point.”
One brilliant way to battle entrepreneurial loneliness is to come to SME XPO, the Evening Standard’s upcoming event for ambitious business founders and decision-makers, on 23 and 24 April. Hashemi, Prince and Carter are speakers at the event, which will unite more than 5,000 entrepreneurs and senior business leaders. They, along with Annabel Lui, co-founder with her sister Emily of bakery business Cutter & Squidge, will be discussing making a splash: how to launch your brand in the right way. The entrepreneurs will share really practical ideas about what marketing ideas they have found work best (and what’s not worth the investment), including ideas sourced from BWB.
Lui is a member of three women’s networking groups, which have helped Cutter & Squidge’s turnover soar from £2 million in 2019 to nearly £9 million last year. Her sounding boards include legal firm Memery Crystal’s Women in Business group (set up when the law firm’s chair, Lesley Gregory, took the helm and learnt that 90 per cent of her counterparts in other law firms were male) and Cavendish Capital’s Women of Influence network as well as BWB. “They have given us some really key advice on the focuses for the next few years,” she says. “In many ways, we are a support system for each other, but also have common ground on key business hurdles. We share contacts, we support each other on the ups and downs, and we give smaller brands advice.”
Lui says the women’s networks are a good counterpoint to male dominance in areas like funding and VC networks. “We get questioned by middle-aged men who don’t understand our space and don’t want to,” she reports. “We had someone that wanted to be on our advisory board likening us to a restaurant chain. That clearly showed he didn’t know us at all. I think female entrepreneurs are more honest and open and that can be a hindrance.
Lui’s final advice to others following in her entrepreneurial footsteps is: “Network, network, network. Emily and I try to go to one networking event per week to get the word out. You never know where an opportunity is going to spring up.”
“The bias (against women) in funding and scaling clearly exists,” Hashemi adds. “Our data shows that businesses that are female-founded have revenues that is 2.7 times smaller than those with a male co-founder on the team. It’s essential to equip businesses in our community with the tools to succeed in an environment that is still extremely male-centric. My top tip for female entrepreneurs is go for it, and just start. Leap, and the net will appear.”
SME XPO is the UK’s leading event for ambitious founders and decision-makers looking to scale. Network, listen, learn and grow your business. FREE tickets at smexpo.co.uk
