Businesswomen in the North East are set to benefit from a multimillion-pound investment trust that aims to rebalance the bias in the venture capital industry towards all-male founding teams.
Newcastle entrepreneur Sophie Milliken, founder and CEO of business support agency Moja, has recently been appointed to the board of the Funding Focus Investment Trust plc, an organisation which is on a mission to level the playing field that female entrepreneurs face when raising capital.
Ms Milliken become involved with the London-based trust after discovering huge disparity in the amount ploughed into companies launched by men compared to women. According to research by Pitchbook in March, the share of funding to mixed gender teams fell from 14.6% in 2020 to 13.6% in 2021, and the share to all-female teams collapsed from 2.4% to just 1% of the total.
