Saturday 8th March 2025 was International Women’s Day. A celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. A call to action to raise awareness around gender-based discrimination and disparities.
The latter has become apparent in our world of Tech & High Growth recently, with a collaborative report by Charles Stanley and Beauhurst, titled New Female Founders, uncovering persisting gender disparities in UK entrepreneurship.
The report revealed female-founded businesses receive less than 2% of equity funding.
And, despite the number of female-led startups doubling over the past decade, they still face significant funding gaps, bias and limited networking opportunities, and women still only hold 5% of leadership roles in the tech sector.
In this blog, as part of our ongoing Female Leaders campaign, we’re shining a light on some of the leaders, events, and organisations at the forefront of changing that.
SIE VENTURES: SHAPING, INVESTING, EMPOWERING
Last year we joined forces with Sie Ventures – the capital platform for exceptional female founders – to support their Catalyst Programs with specialist workshops and coaching.
Over 8 weeks the program focuses on transformation, education, growth and fruitful connections, empowering the next generation of female-led companies and driving more capital to diverse founders.
To date, Sie founders have raised almost £200m to scale their ventures, and with Cohort VI kicking off on 25th March 2025, we caught up with Triin Linamagi, Founding Partner & CEO at Sie Ventures, to discuss the program’s importance.
“Throughout my journey as a founder and venture capitalist, I noticed many women WERE coming to me for fundraising advice and support,” Triin told us. “Their challenges and determination inspired me to launch Sie Ventures – a platform designed to help female founders make informed decisions about their fundraise and set themselves up for success.”
“I’m immensely proud that our founders have raised £197 million to date, proving that when women receive the right resources and support, they can achieve extraordinary results. In an era of increased scrutiny around DEI, now is the time to double down on backing underrepresented founders and demonstrating the tremendous value they bring to our ecosystem.”
Pancali Malkan, CP’s Tech & High Growth Raising Finance Manager, and Becca Cope, THG Senior Client Manager, lead Cooper Parry’s support of the Catalyst Program:
“The Sie Ventures program proves there is a future where women lead with vision and resilience,” Becca added. “It’s inspiring, breaking barriers, starting important conversations, driving economic growth, both for people within the ecosystem already and future leaders too. When we support the founders with their finance questions, you can see the passion. They’re keen to learn, succeed and make a real difference with their ideas. It’s a fantastic partnership to be involved in and it inspires me further to drive and succeed in my own career.”
IWD DINNERS IN SCOTLAND
We’ve also teamed up with Harper Macleod, one of Scotland’s leading full-service law firms, to host a series of private dinners around International Women’s Day.
The objective is simple: to bring together women entrenched in the Scottish tech ecosystem to share ideas, learnings - the good and the bad – over some excellent food and drink.
We know how important building a community with peers and champions who can relate with the highs and lows of scaling a business is, paired with the resilience that’s still needed as a female leader in the industry. So, we’re celebrating the women moving the dial.
The first took place on Wednesday 5 March at The Walnut, a boutique neighbourhood restaurant just outside of central Edinburgh. The second is happening on Thursday 13 March at Maison by Glaschu in Glasgow, and for both dinners, we welcome a mixture of investors, founders and advisers.
Ella Campbell, Founder of EMCAI attended our first IWD dinner. She said:
“Events like the ‘Women in Tech’ dinner are true to the ethos of International Women’s Day – based on respect, empathy, and there’s a real authenticity in how everyone interacts and supports each other. The Scottish tech ecosystem is really supportive of female start up founders, but I’d like to see more support across Scotland and the rest of the UK for scale ups as this is where women are less visible. As an early-stage founder in a male dominated sector (construction-tech) it’s vital to have role models further along in the growth journey who have been there, done that, and can empathise and advise accordingly.”
Dr. Kate Smith, Founder of ProfessorMe, also joined us. She commented:
“On International Woman’s Day, it’s so important to acknowledge the vital roles of women across the world and also remember the role that suffragettes played. It was their fight for women’s rights, especially voting rights, that have helped shape IWD and continue to inspire me today. I love being a female founder and am excited to launch the world’s first digital professor – our mission is to ensure that no one is left out of the classroom and we’re already taking our platform to countries with broken education systems such as Myanmar. The road isn’t always easy, but events like tonight are so meaningful, and I cannot wait to see what others around the table do. We are all unstoppable.”
LEADING FROM THE FRONT: CP IN SCOTLAND
As well as hosting our IWD dinners with Harper Macleod, we have our own forward thinking women within team Tech & High Growth in Scotland. So, we caught up with two of them to find out why IWD is important to the ecosystem.
Kirsty Irvine, CP’s Senior Ecosystems & Partnerships Manager commented:
“Let’s be frank: we shouldn’t need IWD. It’s 2025 so gender parity is long overdue and at times it’s hard not to get disillusioned by the pace of progress and global rollback of women’s rights. But every day I see women working to shift the dial and that is never not inspirational.”
“We’re fortunate at Cooper Parry to be both the conduit and advisers to some seriously forward-thinking female founders who, despite the barriers ahead such as the gender pay gap and imbalance of equity funding, are building innovative businesses and curating strong communities. So, we keep amplifying, we keep pushing, and we work hard so it’s easier for future generations to come.”
Kirsty Paton, Employer Solutions Director added:
“There’s a huge opportunity for female-founded businesses but many are still not getting access to funding. There are lots of initiatives to change that in Scotland and the UK, and as advisers we are well-placed to support through introductions and bringing together female founders at all stages of their journey to drive progress.”
“A strong network is the best platform, and seeing other successful female founders demonstrates that, despite the equity funding statistics. I get to work with lots of incredibly successful high growth companies and it’s great to see the huge increase in the number of female founded businesses over the past few years, as well as the focus across the ecosystem on driving change. Our first IWD dinner was a great example, bringing together likeminded advisers, funders and founders to build networks and help build a platform for future success.”
