Funding the Females of the Future

12 Hay Hill, London. September 13th, 2017

Debbie Woskow joined us to talk about her entrepreneurial journey, and her latest venture seeking to redress the imbalance in entrepreneurship between men and women. We were fascinated to hear about the wide array of ventures Debbie has successfully run over the years, and thoroughly entertained by her stories and nuggets of wisdom. We hope all you entrepreneurs picked up some useful advice about how to build your businesses, and for everyone else you were inspired by her story and success.

We’re excited about Debbie’s latest venture Allbright, and see a lot of potential for BroadMinded to be involved in making it a success and vice versa. If you’d like to be the first to know about updates with the fund, latest courses for founders and aspiring founders through the academy, and news for UK female founders, subscribe to the Allbright email list or follow their social media here – www.allbrightcollective.com

Our top 10 takeaways from the night:

1. 17% of funding last year went to companies with a female founder (shocking isn’t it?). A survey completed by Allbright found that:

• 1 in 10 women want to start a business but haven’t
• 1 in 3 women don’t believe they have the skills to start their own business
• 1 in 3 women don’t believe they have the confidence to start their own business
• 1 in 2 women don’t believe they have the network required to start a business, and would like a partner to do it with

2. The most important qualities in a founder – the 3 Gs. Grit, Graph, Grace. It’s good to be bad/ fail at something along the way though – it teaches you empathy.
3. For each difficult decision and challenge she’s taken on, her mantra is ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ You need to be willing to take the risk.
4. Your business will never end up as you envision it will at the start. Your ability to move with change is what makes it work.
5. Be realistic about what your idea really means in terms of business model – their idea for an online home swapping business turned out to be 80% customer service reps which was not what they had imagined.
6. Sometimes you need to be patient for inspiration to strike. And always turn up, however unexcited you are to go to an event or meet new people. You never know who you will meet. Debbie met the buyers of Love Home Swap at a conference she didn’t want to attend, and her co-founder of Allbright at a party she didn’t want to go to.
7. Think about how you can amplify your thoughts and perspective for the good of your industry, not just your business. Raise your head above the day to day operations.
8. As an entrepreneur, you need distractions along the journey. It can feel like forever from launch to exit / maturity otherwise. And have a good team around you to keep you going.
9. The key requirements to be successful as an entrepreneur are 1/ money 2/ skills 3/ confidence 4/ space. Get up early and get ahead of the day. Debbie gets up at 5.20am for a morning boxing session – you need structure and discipline to fit everything in.
10. Don’t raise money from wankers, don’t hire fast, develop a thick skin. And surround yourself with your girl gang (something BroadMinded can help with!)