Playfair Capital, Tech Nation & Google for Startups to hold Europe’s largest ever mentoring and fundraising event for women founders
- Playfair Capital, Tech Nation & Google for Startups join forces for the sixth edition of their Female Founder Office Hours initiative
- This event will be the largest yet, with over 300 female founders and 120 VCs from some of the world’s leading funds
- Data from the previous five events shows that over 27% of companies that have attended have gone on to secure funding from VCs, angel investors or other sources
- Since October 2019, Playfair Capital’s office hours has delivered over 3,000 mentoring sessions for women founders across Europe
On Thursday 24th November, 2021, Playfair Capital and 120 of the world’s leading venture capital funds, including Accel, Amadeus, Atomico, Balderton, Creandum, EQT, Notion, Partech, Project A and Seedcamp will be holding remote office hours for more than 300 female founders from across Europe.
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 five editions saw a total of 3,000 individual mentoring sessions with 680 founders and 150 investors taking part. To date, 27% of founders have gone on to raise funding after attending an event, with success stories including Anansi, Freyda, HIVED, Vira Health, and Walking on Earth. This amounts to £184m in total funding that has been disclosed.
This sixth 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 years since the first edition of Female Founder Office Hours and I’m thrilled that we are seeing an increasing percentage of attendees go on to raise funding from VCs and angels. Yet the fact our sixth event will be the largest ever tells us that the problems of access for women founders and the resulting imbalance in funding remain. With our partners, investors and the support of the ecosystem we are fully committed to continue the mission we have started. ”
Henrik Wetter Sanchez, Playfair Capital’s Principal, added:
“Collaboration is Queen. At Playfair, we believe in the power of bringing people together to solve issues and make us all stronger. As investors, we recognise the potential for entrepreneurship to improve society, but this will not be fully realised until we achieve real equality in access to startup funding. That’s why we have always been strong advocates of the power of collaboration. We are using this principle to address the continuing headwinds for women founders in tech through our Female Founder Office Hours initiative, now in its sixth edition.”
Lauren Nicholson, Community Lead at Tech Nation, commented:
“Founders’ Network is once again proud to be taking part in the 6th Edition of Female Founders Office Hours. It’s been a privilege to help support over 700 women founders over the last 2 years to take part in some of the 3,000 one-to-one mentoring and pitch meetings that FFOH have put on and witness their start-up journey. We’re excited to see the new founders and women-led teams to join us in November and see where the Office Hours takes them.”
Marta Krupinska, Head of Google for Startups UK
‘Access to networks and warm introductions are key when it comes to fundraising, which is why we’re so delighted to continuously partner with Playfair and Tech Nation for the Female Founders Office Hours. It’s a project where everybody wins — the VCs get access to exceptional founders, the founders get much needed cash to grow their businesses, and the customers get better, more inclusive, more competitive products, delivered by a more diverse tech ecosystem.’
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 go to: http://playfaircapital.com/ffoh/
About Playfair Capital
Playfair Capital is an early-stage fund that commits to companies early and with conviction. Based in London, Playfair combines the best aspects of angel investing with a focused fund, to invest in truly ambitious founders, wherever they are in the world. Playfair takes a sector-agnostic approach and investments span deep tech, SaaS, marketplaces and B2B companies. We’ve backed the founders of more than 70 companies including Mapillary (acq. Facebook), CryptoFacilities (acq. Kraken), Omnipresent, Orca AI, Ravelin, sprout.ai, Thought Machine, Trouva and Vinehealth.
About Tech Nation
Tech Nation fuels the growth of game-changing founders, leaders and scaling companies so they can positively transform societies and economies. We provide them with the coaching, content and community they need for their journey in designing the future.
Our current mission is to unlock the growth potential of 1000 scaling tech leadership teams across the UK by 2022. We want to contribute to a future in which anyone with vision and drive can access the skills and support needed to succeed as a game-changing leader.
About Google for Startups
Google for Startups works to level the playing field for startup founders and communities to succeed by bringing the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices to startups. Paired with a deep commitment to create diverse startup communities, many of our offerings are designed specifically to provide underrepresented founders with access to resources and opportunities. We support startups everywhere to build something better. Because when startups succeed, we all succeed.
