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Julia Brown
Serial entrepreneur - Fundraising and Growth Advisor to Female Founders - CEO and Founder of Enter The Arena I Keynote Speaker I Podcast Host I Best-Selling Author
Julia Brown, with 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, is a seasoned businesswoman dedicated to supporting female founders in raising finance and scaling their businesses. She is the CEO and Founder of Enter The Arena, aiming to empower female founders with investment advice and business coaching. Through her initiatives, Julia has supported over 1,500 women in their entrepreneurial journeys and collaborated with various partners within the ecosystem. She is a prominent figure in the startup community, frequently speaking at events and media, advocating for gender equality in investment. Julia is the host of the podcast 'Fundraising Stories with Female Founders' and the author of the best-selling book 'RAISE: The Female Founders Guide To Securing Investment.', the first of its kind for female founders.
Highlights
#investors: What are you doing to address intersectionality and the needs of the #LGBTQ+ founder community? 🌈🌈 🌈
I’m just back from the Intersectional Incredibles Forum from i³ investing hosted at Google UK HQ, joining the incredible co-founders (and lesbian fiancées!) of amigas, Imogen Roy and Cyntia Miyashita 🏳️🌈.
Here’s what I learned and noticed:
🕺A conference that starts with dancing to Vogue and singing along to Born This Way is WAY more fun.
❓Intersectionality is “a concept for understanding how aspects of a person’s identities combine to create different and multiple discrimination and privilege”.
🙋♀️ Acknowledging the challenges of intersectionality means no one is left behind in our collective movement towards a more equal, equitable and just society. Equality must be for everyone.
🤦♀️ There were very few women at the conference and it was mostly white faces. Seems that lack of diversity is present in the LGTBQ+ founder community too?
💪Underrepresented founders are more likely to be resilient due to the challenges they’re faced and overcome in life. Resilience is one of the most valuable qualities of successful entrepreneurs. So.. their startups tend to perform better.
🦄 There are 37 LGTBQ+ Unicorns
🌎 49% of the fastest growing UK startups have at least one migrant founder
3️⃣ Only 3 funds operate in this space: Chasing Rainbows, Colourful Capital, Indentity Ventures. They’re capitalising on this huge gap in the investment landscape. Where are the rest of you?!
📋LGTBQ+ investors and founders lists are published on Crunchbase or Pitchdeck https://lnkd.in/eT4YVhx9 and https://lnkd.in/eK8HjdeJ
🍑 Anal douching is an untapped market opportunity (not just gay men, but straight couples too)!!! Checkout https://lnkd.in/eJiBqbPh
🤯 Investors say things like “we have already invested in an LGTBQ+ founder this year” as a reason not to invest. So lazy.
💰We need more representation from the queer community in the investment ecosystem.
Thanks for all the powerful insights from
Ben Stokes at Chasing Rainbows
Ramzi Rafih at No Label Ventures
Nina Mohanty at Bloom Money
And to Christian Tooley for bringing it all together!
Thanks also to Glen Waters at HSBC Innovation Banking for inviting me along 👍🏻
#iiF #intersectionincredibles #LGBTQ #investment
This is a letter I recently signed with over 140 other senior women to express our serious concerns with the recent changes the government made to the rules around angel investing.
On 30th January the income threshold for high net worth individuals investing was increased from £100,000 to £170,000. It is predicted that this will result in a 70% fall in women qualifying as angel investors.
As female investors are significantly more likely to back #femalefounders, this will have a huge impact on the chances of women led startups securing funding. With less than 2% of funding going to female founder led businesses as it stands, this is worse than terrible news.
We are keen to understand what forecast the government has made of the impact of these changes on the numbers of women who may qualify; and what forecast they have made of the impact of these changes on women’s economic parity in the UK.
We want to understand how the Government is proposing to ensure the tech sector/ female founders/ female angel investors are not detrimentally impacted by this change in law
This letter was sent to Rt Hon Caroline Nokes, Bim Afolami MP and cc’ed to Number 10.
Please lend your support by commenting on and sharing this post.
#HerWealthHerRight #genderequity #genderfundinggap
