Funding among key barriers as national Scaleup Institute event shines a light on female founders

The UK scaleup community must improve access to funding for female founders and get better at shining a light on female-led business success stories to fulfil its potential over the coming years.

This was the view of experts who gathered in London last week (November 4) for the launch of the Scaleup Institute’s Scaleup Annual Review 2024.

The event, as well as the report itself, focused on the current landscape for female scaleup leaders in the UK including the disparities with the opportunities for male-founded scaleups and how to tackle these.

Using Beauhurst data, the report found there are currently 63 female-founded scaleups who have exceeded £50m turnover and are continuing to grow. They are employing around 67,000 people with a combined turnover of £20.4bn.

The report also used data from Companies House to show the number of ‘visible’ scaleups, those passing the £10.2m turnover barrier or which have £5.1m in assets in 2023. The number of female-founded businesses achieving this level was 771, up five per cent on the previous year.

However, attendees at the event shone a light on the issues which continue to be faced by female scaleup founders across the UK.

During a panel discussion focusing on ‘sectors and super scalers’, Ana Stewart a Scottish-based serial entrepreneur and former chair of the Scottish Government’s Independent Women In Entrepreneurship Review, outlined the funding imbalance that female-led scaleup leaders face.

She said: “Two pence in every pound of equity investment goes to female founders. There are some brilliant entrepreneurship initiatives [for female scaleup leaders] but we need to shake it up and collaborate more.”

The funding issue was also raised in an earlier panel discussion on the progress of the UK scaleup community over recent years and its future.

Sam Smith, serial entrepreneur and founder at advisory and capital raising group finnCap said: “Until we change the balance in the investment community and increase the number of female venture capitalists, we will find the funding imbalance difficult to address.

“We’ve got the data of the number of how many women have grown their business past £50m, it’s 63, so can we learn lessons from them?”

In the same discussion, Sherry Coutu, serial entrepreneur and non-executive director at education publishing company Pearson discussed the issue of educating females about inspirational local scaleup stories.

She said: “Every girl should know the top 25 scaleups in their area, and so should every boy and every MP – we have the ability to access this information.”

Amin Vepari, business finance and scaleup lead, Lancashire County Council, attended the launch event on behalf of Two Zero.

Reflecting on the discussions and the findings of the Scaleup Annual Review 2024, he said: “It is clear progress is being made nationally in addressing the barriers that female-led scaleups face, but there is still a long way to go before we have a truly equal scaleup ecosystem.

“In 2022, Lancashire County Council published our Growing Women, Growing Lancashire report, which included independent in-depth analysis of the issues that women growing businesses face in Lancashire and a set of recommendations both for the council and the wider business community.

“Among the recommendations was expanding the amount of fully-funded support for women to grow their businesses. In response, Two Zero has since funded two cohorts of Women Scaling Up, a scaleup support programme designed to specifically address the unique barriers Lancashire’s female entrepreneurs face.

“Lancashire County Council will continue to provide resource, through Two Zero, Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth and our other support services to champion and support female leaders of high-growth businesses and address the challenges of female business leaders.”