 single use plastic bags with eco-friendly reusable bags that feature advertising from sustainable grounds on them and tapping into that desire to reuse and be more sustainable, consumers can reuse our bags and using our app can earn rewards that they can then spend back on the sustainable grounds that we advertise. So quite interesting that I'll you know tie in with the sustainability side of what you guys are interested in as well but also from the tech side you know that we built our entire platform we built an app I never thought I'd end up in a tech startup and now that I'm here I realize that it's not as big and scary as maybe maybe everyone thinks it is. So as I only mentioned this this survey was launched in partnership with Women in Tech so I'm the UK ambassador for Women in Tech which is an amazing community that focuses on closing the gender gap in in the tech industry and they're doing some really really amazing things so if you are someone who's interested in space if you are looking to get into tech or looking to change your career or maybe you're kind of already in there and you want to mentor or be involved please do check them out that it's some really really exciting things. But yeah no I really really am excited to talk to everyone today I think that what's really lovely being in the role that I'm in right now and in my role in the community is being all these amazing women coming through really trying to you know challenge the way things are being done and having these conversations about where the difficulties are I think is the first step to addressing them. Thank you Ashley if I could invite Raf to share introduce yourself that'd be great. Oh thank you for having me by Ella and it's a pleasure to be here to share my journey with everyone. So I am Raf Bumbra I have worked in the tech industry for about 25 years now as a consultant 10 years of that time has been spent in technology recruitment where I developed a passion for making progress on gender equality. Seeing the lack of women around me meant that I had to go and do something about it so in 2015 I set up my first business Stretch of People which helps leaders and executives set up their diversity strategies and helps companies attract and retain women in tech. Around the same time I found myself talking to many women who are facing many barriers and I really want to understand the challenges that they faced when entering the the tech industry between 2016 and 2018 we conducted many some research and ransom initiatives which were hugely successful in London. So that led me to set up my second business in 2018 which is Kajigo. It's a world's first mentoring app supporting girls and women into STEM and technology careers and we are on track to support 20 000 girls across the UK schools over the next year so before the end of 2023 which I'm delighted to say is working so well and we're having a huge impact in helping young girls progress not just into the tech industry but also teaching them the foundations of business which is very very important that we spill that over into this next generation. I'm also an advisor to businesses. I sit on a couple of boards the Women's Business Board and also the Education Task Group in Bristol to make progress for women in the South West region and finally I'm host of an Instagram live chat show which airs every Monday evening called Women Talk Tech. It's been running for 18 months. I get to talk to a variety of lots of different women who work in a variety of roles in technology across industries sharing their strategies for success leadership lessons and aiming to help more women break into the tech industry. Thank you Rob and if I may Zoe can I invite you to introduce yourself to our audience. Hi Viola and hello to everyone who's joining today. So my area of passion and specialty is leadership and communications or leadership and storytelling if you like. So how can we lead in our context and how can we engage and inspire others to be part of translational change. Most recently I've created the third online course that I've created for Cambridge where I'm a fellow and that is a course called Women Leading Change shaping our future. So it was wonderful to be able to do a deep dive specifically looking at the dynamics of women's leadership and that came actually partly the inspiration for that was the course that I've run the last couple of years working with Emirati women in Dubai and seeing how powerful it is when women can get together as a community to support each other to build capability and confidence. So my background is that I've got a long career in business I was managing director of global consultancies also worked in-house as director of communications and sustainability for British telecom, BT retail and did a master's in sustainability leadership at Cambridge when I was quite old. So I've learned the value of education but my focus is very much on you know what are the pragmatic tools that we need to lead change. So lovely to be here Viola. Thank you Zoe and now if I could come to you Irena and please to introduce yourself to our audience. Hi Viola thank you and hi everyone my name is Irena Maffini and my background is working and investing in sustainability startups. I've done this for almost 12 years and I have to say that the first half of my career had very few female founders and historically I guess sustainability more called like clean tech is focused on a lot of energy businesses or you know kind of and there have been not many women but in the last few years I've been focusing much more on circular economy and actually sustainable fashion more recently and it's actually very nice to see many more female founders in these sectors. I'm also part of two angel groups called Hermesa and Alma they specifically focus on supporting female founders and I think there are more of these groups or funds that focus in this area. This is also something that I witnessed changing in the last couple of years and then so I look forward to the discussion today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now the last and not the least Freddie could you introduce yourself as well. Thank you. Of course thank you so much it's so lovely to be here with you all so I am Freddie I currently have an awful call so please forgive my slightly strange voice. I'm the founder of POP which is a mindset and performance coaching practice for venture investors and for entrepreneurs. I've always been fascinated by human potential and outlier behaviors and work with very high performing individuals to help them elevate their sense of impact but also fulfillment and energy. Prior to coaching I used to build teams of venture investors so I did a huge amount of work around improving diversity in this still very homogeneous industry and specifically around increasing the proportion of women. There's obviously still a very long way to go but things are starting to move in the right direction and I'm excited to be here with you all and have this conversation so thank you so much for having me. Thank you all for the quick introduction so now before I share the part one result of the survey just a reminder if anyone have any questions please do put your questions into the chat function our colleague will be monitoring that and we will try our best to answer as many as possible in the final Q&A time. Now let me just see if I am able to share my screen so can everyone see my screen okay great now So talking about this survey and the survey data we launched it as I mentioned on the 7th of March and we rounded here the 31st of March in total there are 82 people participated in the survey and majority of them so around 80% of participants are from the UK and more than 90% of them are sole founders or co-founders in the business. In this survey we also asked about participants their industry and sectors and how long they have been an entrepreneur so we are able to cross analyze the different metrics so in part one we have asked to what extent do you fear your gender has impacted your business journey in terms of fundraising business development and so on so according to the survey the stats what we find out is that gender has the most negative impact and the area will be the fundraising and followed by investors relationship management interestingly the stats also shows that being a female founder seems to have a positive impact on you know recruitment or managing teams so these stats are similar across different sectors so there is no significant difference between industries so now I would like to just post this survey for the time being and then to ask rough because as the female founder yourself are you surprised at this result of the survey does this align with your own experience um Viola I'm not surprised at all I have to say we hear this and we've heard it for you know a long time and it seems as if it's a broken record right even when we did our own research with structured people in 2016 we had the same story from female founders so I don't know if many people have read the Rose review came out a few weeks ago Alison Rose did say that if women started businesses at the same rate as men we would add 250 billion to the UK economy so we know it's a great time to start and scale a business yet we know that gender equality is holding women back and when you start looking at that whole gender piece what is it that holds women back and I'd like to say from my own experiences I was quite late to the entrepreneurial journey I started in my late 40s and you know when you look at gender stereotypes for example you know most women wouldn't start a business in their late 40s because that's when you would have already started to scale up your business and our investors going to take you seriously so I'm already starting my entrepreneurial journey on the wrong footing according to some so it's going to be harder for me to get investor funding but be taken seriously as a female founder but I would say that it's been a very difficult road entrepreneurship is a roller coaster of a ride every day is very different and you have to be very strong motivated and determined to get through it but let's look at let's look at all the problems that women are trying to solve we need women to solve these problems we are solving half of the world's problems and at this moment in time men are dominating this space so look at all the solutions that investors and VCs are missing out on there's so much gain to capitalize on right at this moment in time so I would say where where I've actually seen some challenges myself is not being taken seriously when I've gone into a meeting and I've talked about my product or my business and I sometimes wonder if I had a male co-founder would that conversation take a different route automatically I see a lot of female founders approach me and say you know they know of a male founder who has got investment even though he hasn't even got an MVP it's just an idea you know how's that even possible and so then you say to yourself is it because men network differently to women you know we do have this issue about networking but also do they have access to better mentors do they have access to a brotherhood that we don't know about so there's lots of factors I think that present us with challenges and when we don't have access to these networks to these mentors we really don't get access to funding and we know that historically women don't have access to much funding so we have to work much much harder and I'd also like to say that it has been difficult for women to break into business but I think the pandemic has really escalated things so if we start to look at women taking up the majority of work at home it means that their whole they've been held back as well from moving their businesses forward so I think in terms of the results of this survey when it comes to funding it's it's very difficult for women and we need to look at new ways to provide that access into funding for women but also that business development pathway how can they scale up that business who's working with them to help them expand that business outwards thank you Rob thank you for sharing with us your kind of personal journey as well as how you fear about being a female entrepreneur so we have one of the comments and there was in the survey and it says I was rejected by an investor because of my male co-founder left he wasn't a technical co-founder but he was just assumed that he was why I wrote my codes and managed to take big so I would like to come to Ashley because you are a UK ambassador for women in tech so looking at you know comments like this what role do you think you know groups like women in tech can really kind of play that support role to support female funders to overcome like challenges like this yeah I mean a great question and I actually just want to kind of come back something that that Rob touched on as well around this idea of community and network and who you go to to ask questions to get that mentorship to get the right introduction as well because I think that you know community is a huge factor in opening up the doors for for women in every space whether you're a founder or whether you're looking to get into the leadership role or whether you're looking to get into break into more traditionally male areas of work right so I think what's wonderful about you know communities like women in tech is it feels like firstly it's it's intended to provide a safe space because I don't know about you guys but certainly if you feel like you're the only woman in the room you know you feel like you can't always ask the stupid question because there's already glaring light on you if you're you already feel like you're having to work 10 times harder than the men around the table to prove that you deserve to be there so you don't necessarily always feel like you can ask the silly question in case you get found out right typical embossed syndrome I'm going to get found out I don't I shouldn't be here with something like a career like women in tech you have a safe space to ask those silly questions and to be like sorry there's this acronym and I have no idea what that means can someone talk me through that can someone show me how to use this piece of tech is there a way that I can make this run more efficiently so just that safe space where you can ask those questions and improve you know your own understanding so when you are in those rooms maybe you just feel a bit more confident you just feel like you've had the opportunity to ask without having to do it in a place that maybe doesn't make you feel that confident they also open up opportunities in terms of you know mentorship connecting with like-minded people you know having that sort of desire to get into a space like tech it's not marketed at women well as I said I was I never thought I'd end up in tech absolutely not I thought you know I'll end up in a marketing role or whatever the kind of role that's typically okay for women to go into but actually tech is a huge industry and there's so many different roles that you can do to get into it so trying to make it more available and put those resources out there so people could start to understand it's not just some bro world where people are sitting in there you know sitting behind a screen tapping code that's what we all assume it is tech is fascinating it's everything that we do on a day-to-day basis we know tech we just don't think that we do so having access to those resources understanding it talking to like-minded people in a really safe environment is really exciting um and then as you know again just touching on something that the rough said about that kind of brotherhood that I think a lot of guys kind of lean on that that kind of boys club you know who can I talk oh mate can I can do you know anyone that can help you with this we don't have that it's not been established so can those kind of new networks places like women in tech in those communities can they sort of provide that for us as we start to build our careers can we sort of open up the opportunities for other women around us and and be that for each other and continue to use our growth and our success and our opportunities to open up the same for other women and I think that that is what's going to be really really key is us as women working together to really help elevate women in these spaces rather than being forced to see each other's competition which is kind of where we're pushed into at the moment thank you actually so now if we are looking at the result the founders seem to impact their fundraising of an investor relationship for the most so based on there were some quotes and because they are so powerful so I really would like to share with you um please let me know if you are able to see that so an investor told me he does investing women but I have to prove to him that I will work as hard as men that's kind of one of the quotes from the survey and other ones also I think I'm roughly you mentioned a very similar things they don't necessarily have an MVP or some sort but because you know male lead companies have less treasures but then they got investments and so let me just stop sharing I want to come to you and Irina because you are kind of a representing the investors and obviously as an angel investor yourself and you are also in like two female angel groups so what's your view on this is it really this bad as well and have there some changes in the investor communities and can you share with us yeah yeah I have to say that when I saw some of these quotes and I think you presented you know you know some of them and some were actually quite you know shocking to me in terms of you know there was a particular investor telling to a female founder that um you know he doesn't invest in women businesses because women are too emotional and that is you know it is quite shocking to hear that people would even make such comments these days and I think for me the kind of biggest problem still at the moment is is that there are not enough female investors especially being who are partners in some of the largest venture capital funds and so it's you know even and this is you know kind of slowly changing but even you know I understand that in terms of how a VC works with a GPLP structure there's in some funds they are now adding you know the possibility of partners to take maternity leave because that was not something that originally actually put in you know in how defined contracts work so it is you know for me it's a big problem and I'm part of two angel groups called Almen Hermes and that were born to actually with a big mission to bring more female investors to the table for and also to support more female founders of course and in particular like Alma which is now I think the largest community um is 300 or so angels who want to support female founders it's a very diverse and large community from first time angel investor to actually experienced fund managers there are like a few partners in established kind of venture capital funds and it was started by a few people including De Palin and Gia who's now partner speed invest and and recognizing that there was you know a problem as well in the kind of decision making stage that is you know locking deals kind of going through and so I guess in you know as part of the you know these sort of come kind of community bubbles I see you know things kind of like changing I definitely feel like they're when female founders reach out to female investors even if a deal is not for them they would be quite you know helpful in connecting them to different investors what you know actually point of you know going into sort of you know an old boys club and I don't know like old girls kind of clubs or you know and and I also think the males that are part of these networks are the kind of minority but they're also try to be more helpful because they're recognized this is a problem and there was an interesting study by done by docs and which if you're not familiar with these are software tool that enables people to share pitch decks and also monitor what people are doing with them in terms of who looks at them how long they spend on specificity slides that they actually found out that people investors spend much more time on you know on slides and the team slide if this was actually on females and then they spend more time actually looking at slides like the product slide because you know a woman usually needs to show much more traction or has you know investors might show that they are less confidence especially if he's not a tech you know someone coming from a tech background being able to build a successful tech product without having kind of a male founder so being you know seen these type of results is actually you know it's quite sad but at the same time I think that's how things are at the moment but then I think there was also some recent statistics from a pitch book that showed that actually teams that have both female and male founders have now attracted 25 percent on venture capital funding which is you know it is kind of growing in the right direction and we seen I guess kind of Alma and Hermesa so Hermesa has supported I think around 16 companies raising 600k and Alma has supported around 80 companies raising kind of four million so these are still kind of small realities but they're new and they're growing and I think it's you know they're not the only one I think under other angel groups in the UK the four female founders are Eve Angel Academy which I believe was the first one so I think you know the UK Business Angel Association is doing a lot of work so I you know I kind of feel positive the things will change but you know a lot needs to happen I think in in the background supporting women you know and some of these issues that you'll be discussing today. Thank you it definitely is a shift in kind of the industry but still there's a lot need to be done in order to really achieve that kind of balance so let's not forget about the positive impact this survey also shows because they mentioned you know being a woman seem to have also positive impact on recruitment or managing teams this very much kind of aligned with the survey done last year by McKinsey and the LinkedIn blog that Women in Workplace and 423 organizations found that women leaders more consistently ensure the manageable workloads for their teams provided the emotional support and check-in and kind of overall well-being than men so let me come to you Zoe as an educator you are also passionate as you mentioned leadership and communications so in your view what do you think need to be done to shift and transform the industry to more friendly towards women. Yeah thanks for the question Viola I think it's first it is worth acknowledging acknowledging that there are many toxic work cultures that are difficult not just for women but also for men in terms of how we bring ourselves to work and I think firstly you know let's not be naive you know we are operating in a patriarchy and dealing with institutions that are structurally designed by men and we know this in sort of the data data world in particular so you know firstly I think it's like having real clarity around what are the challenges and the barriers so that we're not naive and secondly where are the levers for change and then thirdly what's what's the size of the prize when women are truly able to contribute you know the societal benefit is massive and when so I think that you know that's the contextual piece and when it comes to creating industries that are friendly for women I would absolutely say you know it starts with us it's like how do we build cultures that are psychologically safe for everybody you know that are truly inclusive that foster collaboration experimentation innovation and then how do we walk the talk particularly you know we're all role model but how do we build our own individual capability and confidence and courage to drive change because leadership is at every context and at all levels of an organisation so if you're in HR you can be looking at how can we have more women more inclusive friendly work policies and practices you know if you're on the shop floor it's how do we ensure the innovative new ideas bubble up so I think it's transformation in terms of organisations absolutely starts with ourselves thank you that's very powerful and so just one I think it actually linked to Freddie your work so as a mindset and performance coach you work with a lot of entrepreneurs as well as investors so what what would you suggest is there any like practical like tips and things and our female entrepreneurs and founders can do to kind of help them through those challenges yeah of course I think I'd really echo what Zoe shared in many ways because I think if we think about the big challenges that have come up today around relationship management with investors and fundraising from a mindset perspective confidence is so important I think given that only I think 2.4% of venture backed businesses are led by female founders in the US and under 1% in Europe it's a tiny statistic and so if there aren't that many female role models or people that look like you and act like you that you can look at and aspire towards you are the trailblazer every single woman who gets venture funding is a trailblazer and so mentally the barriers to entry are going to be much higher and so that self-confidence courage conviction is completely essential I think also going into this knowing that it's going to be challenging I think having that embracing yourself with that feeling of you are going to face a lot of rejection and it's that old saying like if you know you're going to be rejected 100 times what you do you just get through them as quickly as you can and take the lessons and move forwards and so getting comfortable with that and seeing the kind of the nose and the rejection as part of the process is really important and the second piece also if we build on what Zoe was sharing about it starts with us we can focus on like what we can control and today right now we can't control the systemic biases or the lens through which investors see the world what they're looking for specifically and actually whether they say yes we cannot control that but what you can control is how you show up how you communicate the learnings you take from every single conversation you have from every pitch you do and ultimately like relationships and fundraising are about value exchanges it's a value exchange between two parties and so as an entrepreneur it's your creative challenge and responsibility to communicate your value proposition in a way that they can hear and to explain your vision in a way that aligns with the interests of the human that's in front of you and so if it's venture funding that you're seeking my advice would be to ask for feedback after every single pitch so that you can continue to refine how you can communicate your value to like lean on your network and exactly as Ashley was saying earlier it's like elevate other people around you it's going to be hard like raising funds it's just it's going to be a challenge but as you take learnings then help other people around you bring them up with you so I think my two kind of mindset pieces would be confidence and conviction is one muscle to build and then the second piece is around controlling what you can control and constantly iterating thank you that's been quite quite a lot for us to think of what we can do definitely starting from ourselves so thank you for all the tips Freddie so now before I share these part two survey results just a reminder if you have any questions please do put into the link in chat function so we will be answering questions at towards the end of the webinar so now I am going to share that again the survey results hope you can see it okay so we have also asked as a female entrepreneur and founder indicated to extend to which you find each of the following skills challenging so that's from self-confidence restaking and as well as like work-life balance so according to our stats the most challenging ones or is the work-life balance but then female founders or co-founders actually have very high motivations so we try to analyze the result with the sectors as well as how long our entrepreneurs have been an entrepreneur and operating and there is no significant difference in between them so now if I may just come back to you Freddie so let me stop sharing you can see the faces and I would like to come back to you Freddie we all know pandemic has been impacting people's life and many comments from the survey actually mentioned about you know with lockdown child care and homeschooling are just really challenging for them women obviously here is female but obviously I believe it's challenging for most of parents and for my personal feeling there are kind of two parts to these challenges one is that obviously the actual physical workload you know like childcare and homeschooling but then there is also the other part it's very much on the mindset part so as a working mom I do often feel like you know not spending enough time with my son for example so as a coach is there any tips that you have in terms of tackling this type of mindset side of challenges for our female founders yeah of course it's an amazing question I think the first piece is this expectations versus reality paradigm that as an entrepreneur you take on such a big responsibility and if you go into that paradigm with the view that you can do it all you can be this high-flying entrepreneur and you can be the perfect partner the perfect parent the perfect friends the perfect gym human whatever like it's an impossible task that you're setting yourself up for and so it's that old phrase of you can have everything you want just not at once and so that priority pecking order of just being really honest with yourself about what a are your priorities and b are you owning them and then seeking support where you need it so whether that's hiring more people or around you to support you whether that's in your family having very candid conversations about what your role is what your partner's role is what your parents role is what your caregiver's role is like creating the infrastructure around you to support you as effectively as you can and if it's not perfect yet it's like okay creating a plan to work towards more support and then in the meantime being kind to yourself about what you can expect from yourself and what you can't so you're not constantly kind of context switching between things and the second piece is on mindset around this guilt that so many parents experience about not spending enough time with their children and especially women and it's because that's like the paradigm that we live in at the moment but the question I'd ask you is how does it benefit your child's life that you aren't there all the time and so to start to explore the other side of that story and there are so many gifts that you not being there physically all the time will give your child and so that could be anything from seeing you as an independent working mother is a huge gift and it demonstrates what is possible and it breaks this paradigm of what you should be doing and how much time you should be spending with your child and I know I had two full like working parents and I had an incredible working mum and for me in my own life I found that very inspiring and she was one of the only mums out of my friends that worked and so I have that from my own life experience but equally it gives your partner an opportunity to step up and share or it means that the child has an opportunity to build bonds with other people in nurseries or family members or caregivers and so stretch their emotional intelligence stretch their resilience stretch their learning stretch their exposure there are so many gifts that come from you not physically being present even if you're creating the dynamics of support around them so it's almost like challenging that in your mind that that would be the question that I would suggest people ask themselves and keep playing until you find yourself balancing because ultimately the more inspired that you are by your life the more inspired your child will be too because you're a happier parent you're higher functioning you're contributing more there's so many gifts that you can bring um so that's what I would suggest thank you very much for that this read even for myself it's so powerful to hear this and thank you for sharing with us and so if I may um I actually uh Zoe I will come to you next you as you mentioned earlier to our audience that um you are also like a leading um kind of a online online training program for Cambridge University and women leading change love the title and so it was mentioned um in post syndrome uh was mentioned in in the comments from the surveys so do you have some tips or suggestions for our founders how to overcome they feel like they have these imposter syndromes can you share with us yeah and first day I just wanted to respond to what Freddie said there because I think it's really powerful I've always been a working mum you know I I had my first child in San Francisco I was working with dot com companies and at the time you went back to work when your child was 11 weeks old and I think I'm a better mother because I've always been a working working mother and I'm always thinking about how can I how can I role model for my daughters you know what that looks like in all its ugly authenticity and vulnerabilities and mistakes and moving forward so so just on that point yeah I think when it comes to to education I mean firstly educating yourself is I would say the number one gift you can give yourself we all know on a macro level that educating women and girls is the most powerful lever for change that we have in the world so and that starts with us and I think just just recognizing that we're not alone when we have those feelings there's a coach called Kathy Capriana who says the most challenging barrier preventing women reaching their full capability is the ability inability to recognize their own special talents abilities and gifts now it's not just your survey and there's a recent survey from KPMG which said 75 percent of women experience imposter syndrome so so what do we do about that you know let's build our self-awareness there are lots and lots of tools out there to really help us understand you know what kind of person am I what are my what are my strengths what are my areas for growth we've talked about support groups and there are people like Freddie who who can can coach and and support as well I've I've got a coach and I find that incredibly helpful in terms of giving me perspective there are also of course courses like women leading change and the benefit of those is you are part of a community of learning you know we all need to constantly learn and unlearn and relearn and actually doing that alongside others I think is really powerful because we can learn so much from other people's insight and I think just echoing what other people have said being kinder to ourselves you know perfect perfection is the enemy of the good we need to take more risks we need to reframe earlier and I think the final point I think I mentioned which is building our awareness is there are some distinct limiting habits and beliefs that women hold more than men there's a book called how women rise that looks at the classic one is how we minimize ourselves firstly with language you know we often apologize for what we say or you know we feel like we need to be given permission and then we do that with our body language as well there's a there's a brilliant anecdote of people in a meeting in the old days when we had face-to-face meetings and late commas were coming in women are scrunching themselves up trying to accommodate the late comers and the men just not at them no so let's not minimize ourselves both with our language both our verbal language and I think the final point here is all of the contributors for our women leading change course and contributors from all around the world all differently experienced when when asked what were they would have done differently they all said be bolder and ask for more and I think it's you know if that feels difficult think about who's who is walking on your shoulders you know change perception by thinking about what you're asking for is what is that making possible for others and ask yourself where can I unique difference because I think if you're if you're living and working and acting from a space of your values and your purpose that's really going to energize you and it will encourage you to be bold brave and go for more so a few thoughts there Viola thank you very much I'm sure our audience will benefit a lot from listening to you you know your your your thoughts shared with us and so conscious with time if I may just come back to kind of the investor side arena so can you for a few kind of practical tips for our female founders now with more and more kind of more female themed you know funds or grants or different type of a funding source outlet do you have some practical tips that you can share with our female founders how they can try and going forward and find a better way to get investment yeah so I think that in general like nowadays it's easier to actually find at least kind of online the names of female investors being these kind of injured investors or you know investment associate principal partners in venture capital funds so for example in a sifted published recently I think at least a few hundred angel investors female angel investors in Europe the support kind of female founders plus that are like these communities so I think reaching out directly to all the communities as well as the angel groups of business schools which tend to be quite diverse and international is definitely good but also using then you know LinkedIn as a tool to reach out directly to some of the investors that are part of these groups especially if you know they are interested or they're active in that particular you know technology area that you are playing in and and also some actually I something that I see the female founders do much more than male founders is that they send investor updates to you know all of the investors speak to and I imagine especially the ones that said you know no or you know you are too early at this stage just to kind of you know be on the top of their mind and also it is quite impressive to be honest being on the other side receiving the newsletters and seeing how kind of proactive an investor can be and how you know and seeing the attractions that they are getting over time especially if you know it was a company that initially was you know not maybe kind of taken seriously internally and you know I can I can think about a few times that I found myself in in this area in the past and and then I think another I guess kind of deeper again you know from what I've seen that the maybe female founders do a little bit different to male founders is the I think they are more conservative in their financial productions and they tend to be a little bit more uncomfortable when talking about money or they don't talk about money as much as a male founder would be it's very often to see male founders you know they haven't done any research they don't have an MVP telling you how they're gonna build a company with 200 million revenues by year three and they're gonna be you know a unicorn company with nothing and but they will tell you that and then you see I see you know female founders we've actually done quite a lot in terms of already you know our revenue generating they know their customers really well they have you know really amazing plans on how they you know they will make it work and build their company they actually have very conservative financial projections so if you're speaking to a venture capital investor that you know they're looking for the unicorn company you need to show like a financial projection with a hockey stick approach you know 100 millions by year five and you know and usually female founders focus on them essentially depending the financial projection they know almost 100 probability they will achieve and they want you know food their whole story and because I think I guess historically it seems that they suffer more from kind of the imposter syndrome so they feel more uncomfortable telling a kind of high growth story but because all male founders do then they are the ones that actually manage them to raise funding with very little that's kind of like an idea so I think this against would be sort of my kind of top two kind of tips for female founders great thank you very much so we have around 10 minutes left and I think there are a couple of questions coming in so I'm going to just sort of questions as our panelists first before if we have more time and then we can share more on the other parts so one of the questions from our audience were asking female founders are branded as nice or modeling rather than focusing on those skills in teamwork and collaboration how can we help or educate people that these characteristics are what people want and need how can we educate others so I don't know if our two female founders do you have experience of similar things like when you go out to talk to people about your business and your the responses that you get oh that's a nice project I think we have these comments from a survey as well if I nice project and yeah so Ashley and Ralph do you have like a similar experience or how do you find a way to navigate through this if you already experience similar things yeah I it's very relatable I mean just very recently a company had approached me to say they were very interested in working with me and 10 minutes into the conversation it was like Ralph we hear what you're trying to do but we need you to put together a business case and I just found you know you approached me now I have to build a business case and get it over to you for funding you know and it was it was very difficult to to deal with that because why do women always have to build or re keep rebuilding business cases every time somebody is interested in their business and they and they want to work with them so it's a difficult one to crack but I think you have to be very determined you can't back down I think you have to learn to tell your story in a very authentic way somebody once said to me that you know if you're building a house at the top of the hill make sure that whoever you're talking to wants to run up that hill and wants to get into that house and they want to screen from the roof of that house and tell everybody how great that house is so you have to find a great way of overcoming those challenges and barriers when you get into those conversations and learn how to turn them around and luckily for me I was able to turn this one around that I got an email a couple of days later saying Ralph we want to work with you we love your story and we'll invest um so I just think it's you have to persevere and unfortunately that's just the way it is at this moment in time thank you Ashley do you have a couple of more sentences that you want to kind of I'll just share with you yeah no for sure I mean there's sort of like two different things I think going on here this idea that women are brown it is motherly or a bit too nice so all this kind of thing that's it I mean since when did being motherly become a derogatory term if someone says that your motherly is surely you are someone who is absolutely smashing it because my understanding of what mothers do you are running around you're getting stuff done you are organizing you're making sure everyone has what they need to do to be where they need to be at the right time so that sounds like pretty good leadership skills to me I don't know why that's derogatory I'm like get me a mum working on this stuff because I know she's going to get it done on the other side of things um with this idea of nice yeah it's it is tough it's a challenge I mean I I have been in situations where you're kind of it I think it comes back into us not being taken seriously that's a nice project oh good for you good for you exploring that little project um that does happen and I think it's because we aren't taken seriously and maybe it's because you know as women we're raised to be polite we're raised to be self-deprecating we're you know which actually in social situations when you are leading a team you're managing being okay with listening to people and being okay with really wanting to make sure you're cultivating a positive you know team focused culture that's that's a part of this powerful skill being able to make sure that people really are you know comfortable working together they can talk to you they're open they feel listened to they feel heard that's really powerful that's really important I think where it becomes a challenge is knowing when you're allowed to stand up and say actually no that's not okay or feeling feeling supported to do that and I think that's where the struggle is whether you're a founder or not a founder the workplace environment should be making it possible for women to turn around and say no that's not okay or actually this is my opinion and not to be overlooked ignored assuming it doesn't matter not validated or you know you feel so scared if you do say something you might not have a role there anymore I think that's the thing that needs to be addressed being the characteristics that you are that's that's you know if you're good at your job and if you cultivate a great environment that should all be fantastic but you know we can't just bob women off this thing that we've actually as a system asked them to be we need to look at our system from the ground up thank you thank you for sharing with us so we have another question and I think this question is very much for for you and he says what can women founders do in order to close a successful funding wrongs so what's that number one thing number one thing that one thing that should work so as an investor you have that one thing that you fear founders not just internalizing and can really work on and then yeah get it through yeah I guess kind of like echoing a lot of the things that we're kind of set today I think you know depending on the stage of a company if it's kind of pre-sitz this stage therefore angel investors are the kind of key targets or a bit later stage series eight and focusing on vcs I think is funding who will be the sort of kind of you know lead investor for the round or you know the first few angels that are willing to write a check and kind of capitalizing on that because I mean as all the female founders on in this audience on the know it's very hard to get to the first yes and then once you get that that is much easier to get more yes because unfortunately investors have much you know a lot of like under hurt mentality you know when a deal is hyped then you see you know everyone wants to jump on it and at the moment actually the market is quite competitive and and the companies have just raised a funding round get a really approach about the next funding round and because investors want to get in quite early with you know advanced subscription agreements say in advance of the kind of next round and and I also think that you know going back to the kind of you know newsletter keeping investors informed I think you know I know is not like a permanent no the reality I think of investors is that once you know when they use their I guess investment thesis or criteria there are more things that they use to reject opportunities rather than accept them those change all the time especially when they want to get into a deal and they've seen you know knows becoming yes and also yes becoming no so I think you know don't take no for an answer but then yes focusing on really trying to incentivize early investors in so if this is with you know it's an angel round offering you know discounts with advanced subscription agreements as a way to kind of trying to get commitment in kind of get cash in also for sustainability companies is also quite good at looking at grant funding opportunity because that's a way to actually get non-tellutive funding in the business you know some businesses are more suitable than others especially if you have a hardware-based business and using that to build the traction that that is needed to speak to investors and so this but you know I know it's it is not like easy and that's it's you know going back to kind of persevering you know learning from the nose or you know thinking these are temporary knows I'm going to I still have I can still change the mind of these these people that would be my kind of like main recommendation thank you very much so next question and what they asked them we have talked about the value of networks and communities to support women in their business journey so what are the best ways you can suggest to assess this support I'm going to take this question and just to kind of do a bit of a marketing for CISO's accelerator program so we very much try our best to support founders and especially if you are staff that you have accessibility innovations the support in universities and I believe not just Cambridge University a lot of other universities also have a lot of resources sometimes it's really good keep an eye on you know what's going on in this this place accelerator programs incubator programs sometimes you just really need that first community first group of you know people to help you through and as you grow you will carry on build up build out the community and networks so as I mentioned in the beginning of the session we have a woman in sustainability innovation accelerator program now currently open for education so if you are listening and you have the innovation in this space whether it's environmentally or socially that you are trying to help to support please do go online check CISO's website check our accelerator so I have a really good question that I keep it for the final moment as the closing part so this question actually I was asked by someone who is not an investor and no founder ask what can women in the industry do to support the movement so Zoe and Freddie I would like to come to you too and kind of give us from from your perspective you know as your educators as well as as a coach I think this is a very part what can other women do to support a whole you know movement when you're like to kick off this was that me okay so yeah my my thought on this and building on something that Rav said is build our ability to engage and inspire others and for me that is storytelling it's it's what is your story you know what's the message that people are going to take away having had a conversation with you how does that tap into the bigger why why should they care what's in it for them and just listen to others and just encourage stories that the truthful stories that drive transformational change and don't forget that we are telling a story before we even open our mouths so just continually you know improving you know what what that what that looks like so we are actually showing what change can be so Freddie yeah and I'd add that in in many ways is that the biggest gift you can often give the world is is when you are so inspired by your own life and you always you can see people who are really inspired by their own lives and they've looked inwards they found out what's really important to them they've prioritized their life around it and they've got a mission or a purpose or a vision that they're really living and they're living in service as well and so I think being part of the movement in many ways is you looking inwards and being like what do I want to stand for who do I want to be and how am I going to create that in the world and so often you then create waves around you because you are you're so inspiring and and we're in such an amazing point I think in history where we do have there's there's so much room for improvement but we do have so many more opportunities as women than we've ever had before and actually when you look at our ancestors and our grandparents and the opportunities they had access to they were tiny and so actually I just think it's an incredibly exciting time to be a woman and we have so many opportunities but we do also need to remember to also bring up other women around us too so it's really that sense of yourself and your community and how you cultivate that thank you so much I think this is a high point for us to end this webinar and thank you very much for all our amazing speakers today and thank you for sharing you know your your thoughts inside with us and thank you for everyone that joined this session so I put final slides if you would like to get in touch with us this year so it's kind of your accelerator there is an email and please feel free just to get in touch and if you have any ideas you want to exchange you with our panelists I'm sure you will be able to find them I'm linking in and reach out so let's continue this movement all together thank you very much thank you bye bye everybody thank you thank you so much thank you so much thank you bye bye