One In A Million

With just under a third of British entrepreneurs being women, the UK has an unusually low proportion of female entrepreneurs. This is a particularly important group, because their companies and vision will have a greater impact on the state of technology and the economy in the decades to come. Female founders are able to bring new insight, creating businesses for women, by women, that better serve their needs.

In One In A Million, we surveyed some of Britain’s most trailblazing female founders, to showcase their success, and shine a spotlight on the barriers that they continue to face as women.

Strong Foundations

Due largely to its rigid planning system, the UK suffers enormously from expensive housing and office space. This erodes the budgets of households and businesses alike, but it also harms the economy in other ways. By placing limits on agglomeration, we see fewer of the benefits it can bring for innovation, productivity, jobs, and more. 

In Strong Foundations, Aria Babu proposes a series of recommendations – from Street Votes, to Green Belt reform, to amending Change of Use rules – in order to expand the supply of housing, offices, and lab space, to ensure the economy can be as dynamic and productive as possible.

Inspiring Innovation

In Inspiring Innovation, the latest Female Founders Forum report produced in partnership with Barclays, Aria Babu looks at female entrepreneurship in the high-growth sectors such as e-commerce, fintech, and greentech.

She makes three broad recommendations for boosting female entrepreneurship, namely: closing the gender funding gap, which currently sees female founders raising only 15% of all equity finance; tackling STEM drop-off rates, which have resulted in just 17% of tech workers being women; and providing more female role models, given that mentorship has proven to be an effective way of encouraging women to start and scale businesses.

Resilience and Recovery

COVID-19 has posed significant challenges to most companies, but our new analysis of data from Beauhurst indicates that female-led, high-growth companies have been disproportionately impacted throughout the pandemic. However, despite this impact, more than 60% of female-founded, equity-backed businesses are now operating with minimal disruption to their business, showing that female-led businesses are fighting back.

Resilience and Recovery, a new report from The Entrepreneurs Network produced in partnership with Barclays, combines discussions with female founders and original data analysis, to identify the reasons why female entrepreneurs have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.