Inspiring equality for female founders - Jackie Waring, founder of Investing Women Angels and AccelerateHer

“The focus on addressing the inequalities that impact female founders is gaining momentum.”

Today we mark International Women's Day (IWD), an annual global event celebrating women's achievements, raising awareness about discrimination, and promoting gender parity. This year’s IWD theme is Inspire Inclusion with the focus on highlighting the immense contribution of women in forging a better world.

As IWD organisers state, when women are inspired to be included, it brings an accompanying sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment. This certainly rings true in the world of entrepreneurship, where female company founders are making huge strides forward in economic and social terms.

Investing Women Angels, Scotland’s first all-female angel investment group, and its sister company AccelerateHer are among the UK organisations focused on maximising the potential of female-led businesses.

'As IWD organisers state, when women are inspired to be included, it brings an accompanying sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment,' says Waring. Picture: Neil Hanna.

AccelerateHer, which supports the growth and visibility of up-and-coming female-led companies in sectors including life sciences, technology, environment and health, has delivered real impact. Finalist companies in our AccelerateHer Awards, just 5 per cent of the awards applicants, have gone on to raise more than £67 million in investment.

Since launching Investing Women Angels in 2015, we’ve seen a 700 per cent increase in the level of angel investment going into female-founded companies in Scotland. This has risen from a paltry 2 per cent to over 14 per cent according to 2022 data. And in 2023, Investing Women Angels continued that momentum investing in seven female-founded companies.

While there is clearly a long journey ahead in achieving parity with their male counterparts, this rise in investment is significant in economic terms. The £2m invested by Investing Women Angels into innovative Scottish female-founded companies has helped them leverage a total of £50m in wider investment.

More than 550 high-value jobs have been collectively created by these and other AccelerateHer-supported companies, underlining their positive impact on the UK economy. Many of these businesses are also world positive, focused on tackling some of the biggest challenges facing society, health, and our planet.

They include University of Edinburgh spin-out Carcinotech, a life sciences company that aims to accelerate ethical drug screening and the delivery of more effective cancer treatments. Its founder, Ishani Malhotra, has benefited from financial investment from Investing Women Angels and been supported by AccelerateHer. As a winner of the AccelerateHer Awards, Ishani participated in a 2022 market-building mission to California, which opened doors to key US market connections and potential investors. In January, Carcinotech announced the completion of a £4.2m investment round led by Eos, which will help the company build its traction across Europe and support US expansion planned for later this year.

Edinburgh-based Danu Robotics, developer of a revolutionary robotic system that has significantly increased recycling efficiency, is also amongst the innovative, female-led businesses emerging in Scotland. The company’s founder, Xiaoyan Ma, was the winner of our 2023 AccelerateHer Awards in the Environment category, and has also participated in many of our mentoring programmes. Along with financial backing from Investing Women Angels, we are continuing to provide one-on-one support to Xiaoyan through one of our angel mentors as she attracts interest from a wide range of investors.

Danae Shell, founder of Valla, provides another example of the impact being made by entrepreneurial women in Scotland. Her legal-tech company has created an AI-led proposition that makes it easier and significantly cheaper for people who are facing workplace discrimination or harassment to access justice. Along with its social focus, the business also has strong scalability potential underlined by its successful completion of two investment rounds, both of which have included backing from Investing Women Angels.

The growth aspirations of these female-led businesses are further amplified in new research published today by AccelerateHer. Our survey, which included the views of well over 300 female founders from all four home nations across the UK, shows increased levels of belief amongst businesswomen and a strong appetite to grow their companies.

The women surveyed represent a broad range of key economic sectors, and an impressive 92 per cent said they believed their business proposition had scalability potential. More than half said they were currently focused on scaling their businesses, with the majority of those keen to achieve this growth on an international scale.

Our research also highlighted some of the barriers that continue to hold back female-led companies. Access to finance was cited as a key issue with 50 per cent of respondents saying this was impacting their ambitions for growth. Along with wider concerns about resources and finance, the struggle in managing work-life balance was also raised by many female founders who continue to juggle childcare and other responsibilities while managing their business.

While these barriers are well known, the focus on addressing the inequalities that impact female founders is gaining momentum. Last year’s publication of the Pathways Report, co-authored by successful entrepreneur Ana Stewart and Mark Logan, Scotland’s chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, marked an important step forward and set out key recommendations to better support female-led businesses.

The newly announced Pathways Pledge initiative, which includes AccelerateHer among its initial founding members, now plays a key role in leading by example to help inspire action around the principles set out in this report.

This year’s International Women's Day theme to inspire inclusion will be at the forefront of our minds as we continue our focus on accelerating female founders, addressing existing inequalities, and helping women maximise their companies’ economic and social potential.

Jackie Waring FRSE, founder of Investing Women Angels and AccelerateHer