Dispensing with the need for warm introductions and breaking down the barriers to investment, each founder will have the opportunity to meet four investors during one hour of remote office hours to discuss their tech business idea, ask for advice, pitch for investment or find a mentor. 

The event is being held jointly by Playfair Capital, Tech Nation and Google for Startups. The previous six editions saw a total of 4,000 individual mentoring sessions with over 1,000 founders and 150 investors taking part. To date, 21% of founders have gone on to raise funding after attending an event, with success stories including Anansi, Freyda, HIVED, Vira Health, Opply, dotte, and Walking on Earth. This amounts to £280m in total funding that has been disclosed. 

This seventh event is part of a long term commitment to redress the gender imbalance in fundraising, and will continue the use of AI matching technology. This technology improves the relevance of founder to investor matching, and should increase the likelihood of funding being secured. 

Chris Smith, Playfair Capital’s Managing Partner, commented: “Two and a half years since the first edition of Female Founder Office Hours and I’m delighted to see that the impact is being felt not just in terms of more connections between founders and investors but in higher funding amounts. In the autumn, funding data showed that £184m had been raised by companies that went through FFOH; today this number is over £280m. Despite the positive momentum, we know that there is so much more to do and that’s why I’m delighted to be announcing Edition VII today and restating our ongoing commitment to this initiative.”

Jeevan Sunner, Playfair Capital’s Associate, added: “We first launched Female Founder Office Hours in 2019 with 11 investors and 15 founders. The growth of the initiative since then is all down to the support of the wider VC ecosystem: funds, accelerators, diversity groups and publications who have rallied together and given up their time to support our mission. We’re ecstatic to support our female founder community of 791 individuals and excited to see this grow further with the next event.” 

Lauren Nicholson, Community Lead at Tech Nation, commented: “[Founders’ Network is once again proud to be taking part in the 7th Edition of Female Founders Office Hours. It’s incredible to think that over 4000 mentoring hours have been delivered since the initiative started back in 2019 and that more than £280m has been raised by companies that participated in previous editions. We’re excited to bring together another 300 new founders and women-led teams and 130 VCs in April and see where this next Edition of FFOH takes them.].”

To extend the impact beyond the UK, Playfair has also been making its playbook available to any other fund who wants to hold events for underrepresented founders. To date, female founder focused events have been held in the US with Anthemis, Diversity VC and Ladies Who Launch and Southeast Asia with Cocoon Capital and Click Ventures. Other events we have supported include: Access All for BAME founders with Floww, Force Over Mass and Wayra UK  in the UK; Ask Me Anything with Grove Ventures in Israel; and Founders Labs with the Kansas City University Venture Fund. 

For more information and to make an application to attend the event please visit here.