It won’t surprise you to read that businesses with all-female founding teams receive just 2% of venture capital funding.
This statistic – and others along a similar vein – has been widely reported in recent times against a backdrop of rising awareness of institutional gender and racial bias.
Several people are stepping up. Former NorthInvest angel network leaders Jordan Dargue and Helen Oldham, for example, have founded Lifted Ventures to support female founders through capital, expertise and mentorship.
Hazel Moore, chair and co-founder of international investment bank FirstCapital, told my colleague Chris Maguire late last year that the situation is slowly improving but hampered by a lack of female representation in the venture and private equity firms which invest in these entrepreneurial businesses.
Enter Rebecca MacDermid, investment manager at Maven, who has established a female founder funding programme within the private equity firm she joined in mid-2023.
MacDermid, who previously worked in EY’s private capital team and was included on the Northern Power Women 2024 Future List, tells me that the idea was “borne out of many conversations about how we can help get female founders to the same starting point as male founders when it comes to raising investment”.
“Less than 3% of female founders receive investment. If women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men, we could add £250 billion of new value, which is a no-brainer!” she adds.
With female-led businesses the least likely to apply for external finance out of any demographic, according to the British Business Bank, MacDermid is hosting workshops and funding clinics to help provide valuable resources, mentorship and collaboration opportunities to encourage and support female entrepreneurs to build, grow and scale their businesses.
“We piloted our support programme for female founders in Newcastle in November 2023. What we wanted to do was create a safe space for female founders to be able to ask questions that they didn’t feel comfortable asking, help add to their network and try to dispel some of the myths that exist around raising investment,” she explains.
“We also wanted to ensure our investment team were connecting with female founders in the region to grow our pipeline, and hopefully lead to potential investments.
“We brought together nine female founders in a room who were at different stages in their business journey, including some who had never raised investment; some who had raised investment from VC; and some from angels.
“We provided an overview of the different funding options available, the investment process, and our investment team answered various questions. One of the key highlights for me was seeing the founders talking to each other and sharing best practice to build that network and continue conversations afterwards.
“We’ve now launched our programme across our regional offices in a national programme of in-person workshops and also online funding clinics online, delivered by members of the female investment team across Maven.”
MacDermid’s responsibilities as an investment manager in the North East office include deal origination and working on live deals by carrying out internal diligence and working closely with management teams.
Maven is managing the £50m equity fund for the region – which now covers the entire North East – within the £660m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II.
“NPIF II allows us to support businesses at all stages of the life cycle, from startup to more established businesses, which is really exciting,” she says. “It’s the biggest regional fund to come to the region, and we do see a lot of opportunities.”
The largest investment it can make is £5m, while round sizes it is involved in can be no larger than £5m. “The North East has rich industrial heritage, but we also have thriving sectors like advanced manufacturing, technology, games development, and health and life sciences,” adds MacDermid.
“Excitingly there is a thriving tech sector in the region, with hubs in Newcastle, Durham and Tees Valley, with emerging growth areas in the likes of MarTech, EdTech, AgriTech and HealthTech.
“Tech is really exciting for us, and we’ve got a really good pipeline in tech already. We can support all stages of the business journey.”
Maven has supported more than £100m of deals in the region to date – with over £50m of its own funds deployed – supporting 48 companies across over 90 deals.
“You can work out the maths on that… we like to follow-on with our investments,” adds MacDermid, part of a four-strong investment team in the region. “There are a good range of VC and PE firms in the North East, especially in the lower- and mid-market.
“It really is that early stage startup, pre-revenue, seed stage that is finding it more tough to raise funding, especially as the angel landscape is smaller in the North East than in other parts of the UK when it comes to raising EIS/SEIS.”
