Ci Ci Muldoon
Founder & Co-Founder, Serox & Oxford Venture Angels
Hi, I am Ce Ci Muldoon, I am the Founder and CEO of a diagnostics company called Serox based in Oxford, that can find cancer in urine in just three minutes using photonics and AI. And I am also the Co-Founder of Oxford Venture Angels, the new angel investment network in Oxford that is trying to bring together the Oxfordshire ecosystem. Well it’s important to support women in general on what is already a really difficult journey. Being a Founder and raising money is incredibly challenging, but the stats say it, it’s even harder for women and likewise, we don’t have the number of women investors that we’d like to see. So I think that if we bridge together Oxford and Cambridge, we can bring together the community and give them the confidence that they need to be able to go out there and say, yes I can be a Founder, yes I can raise money or yes, I can be an angel investor.
Elliot Moss
Partner and Chief Brand Officer, Mishcon de Reya
I’m Elliot Moss, uh, I’m a Partner at Mishcon de Reya and the Chief Brand Officer. So Mishcon de Reya, um, had created Women of the Arc initiative because what we want to do is celebrate and develop the fantastic network of women that are doing, um, work around the Oxford, Cambridge, London Nexus. And that’s because this focus both on women and both on this area are critical to fuelling the innovation economy and the future of, uh, the British economy. It’s something we’re super proud of.
Nicola McConville
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I’m Nicola McConville, I’m a Partner in the, uh, corporate team at Mishcon de Reya based in our Oxford office. So I think the Arc has been identified both domestically and internationally as a really important, um, hub for innovation in the UK that will actually help support the, uh, domestic economy and also the international economy. It’s been backed by government, it’s been backed by policy makers, it’s been backed by investors. Um, so I think it is a, and it’s been backed by Mishcon. We have offices in Oxford and Cambridge and London. So I think it’s a really important, uh, knowledge rich, energy rich environment that, um, actually will be really exciting to work in over the next, uh, sort of few years and decades.
James Libson
Managing Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Hi my names James Libson. I’m the Managing Partner of Mishcon de Reya. So our long-term vision is very much around the innovation sector. We’re deeply committed to it. Uh, we’re especially committed to it in the UK, uh, and we’re especially committed to it in the Arc which is Cambridge, Oxford and London. And innovation we know is going to be the driving force of the UK economy. If we’re going to get the growth that we so desperately need it’s going to come from innovation. And innovation itself will only happen if we get as much, as many ideas from as many different sources as, uh, as possible. And that will only happen from the diversity of thought, diversity of opportunity and that’s what we’re seeing on display here today.
Liz Upton
Founder & Co-Founder, Negroni Venture Studios & Raspberry Pi
So my name’s Liz Upton. I’m one of the Founders of Raspberry Pi, a British computer company. We started in 2009 and we floated in 2024, at which point I became one of only three female Founders in all of Europe to IPO that year. So we’ve been talking about what the exits from a company can feel like for women, um, how it differs from the male experience of founding, raising and, and leaving. And it’s very, interesting. The cultural differences that we see between the way people react to men and to women, the cultural difference we see in the way that investors will engage with men and women. It’s been a great conversation. So men can really dominate at board level. The boards I sit on tend to be much, much, much more white and male than they are female, which is not actually what you see at C-suite level, for people running the businesses, um, there’s a much more even split and a lot of the businesses that I work with, they’re all women. But, um, I’ve noticed that sometimes you’ll get investors coming in to women led businesses and not taking them anything like as serious as they ought to be doing and for me, as a female investor, this works really nicely because it means that I have my pick of the female led businesses and some of them are really, really, really strong, um, and get overlooked. So it’s, it’s terrific for me, it’s not so good for those founders. I would not ever say go and hire a man because it looks better for investors, it’s, it’s not the way to go and it’s not the way to preserve a culture. But on the whole, I think things are improving in the field and there are now more people like me sitting on boards as we get a pipeline of people who’ve come through and have business success. So, um, yeah, I’d be interested what the next ten years brings.
Hanadi Jabado
Founding Managing Partner, Sana Capital
Hello, my name is Hanadi Jabado. I am the Managing Partner at Sana Capital which is a fund of fund investing in, uh, women led GPs investing in women led or co led deep tech companies. The, the title of the panel was, uh, bigger checks, bigger problems, and, um, we covered all of the issues that, uh, an early stage business can have when it gets to the point of scaling. Um, all the way from, uh, term sheets, uh, choosing the right investors, um, and professionalization and getting the right board and the right board structure. So, uh, I think the main takeaway that I would like, uh, people in the room to remember is that, um, you need to be prepared. You need to be prepared if you are going go and talk to your lawyers. You’re going to be prepared if you are going to go and talk to your investors or to your customers or to your advisors. Uh, before I would have recommended, I mean 10 years ago, 15 years ago my advice would have been, go into a coffee shop where you know no one, grab ten random people and pitch your idea to them and try and get some feedback from them. Fast forwarding, we now have, um, AI friends, um, I’ve got a bunch and they are available all the time and they don’t judge and using AI in a savvy way, you can actually come really prepared. You can come prepared to your conversation with your lawyers and instruct your lawyer properly. Uh, knowing what the terms are and using the time wisely. Um, you can go to your investors and be prepared for the toughest questions they are going to ask you because you can use, um, AI, almost like a rat team and say, okay you’re my investor, ask me difficult questions and, um, what do you think of my answer. And, um, so the first main key takeaway is use the technology at hand, uh, to do that.
Martha Silcott
Founder, Fab Little Bag
Hello my name is Martha Silcott and I am the Founder of Fab Little Bag. Fab Little Bag is a sustainably sourced disposal bag for tampons and pads to encourage those people that flush this stuff down the toilet to not flush and to put it in the bin because flushing causes blockages but more importantly, it ends up polluting our rivers and oceans with what is plastic pollution because most period products are full of plastic. I think, um, organisations like Mishcon have a really valuable role to play because they straddle both sides of the journey. So they represent Founders, so they understand that aspect of the journey and the challenges but they also, um, either represent or are really well connected to the investment and the thing that links everything in this whole space is the legal requirements as well. So they are really well positioned to, to kind of, give back in a way to, to that whole journey by pulling in all their different contacts and shoving them in a room together a bit like today. So it is really valuable and I think it’s, I kind of wish more people would do that.
Martina King
Chair of Luminance, Former CEO, Futurespace
Hello, I’m Martina King. I am, uh, the Chair of Luminance. Um, and until that position I took up earlier this year, I was CEO of Futurespace, a role that I held for about 12 years until its exit to Visa at the end of 2024. As so many of the people here today are Founders you’re so myopically focussed on what it is you’ve got to do every day to make your company a success. I think it really helps to be able to go and network with others so that you can get ideas and introduce best practice and ultimately just the hope that what you are doing every day will, you know, it will work. Uh, career is long these days, um, and that if you are a young Founder, you could still be a Founder when you’re in your sixties. Um, and that if you’re particularly female, that period of time when you’re raising children if you are choosing to have them, is a very short period of time and so for me, I had my family and then went back and I became an entrepreneur. So I think it’s more than possible for us to be able to think really long-term about our careers.
Erika McIntyre
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I’m Erika McIntyre. I’m a Partner in the Corporate Department at Mishcon de Reya. I work with fast growing companies and their investors from early stage all the way through to exit. Um, and I was moderating the panel today on bigger checks, bigger problems. Uh, we had a fantastic group of both investors and entrepreneurs who were talking about, um, the different complexities and the different challenges you get to as, as a company is growing. Uh, what particular terms are more challenging from an investors and a founder’s perspective. What things you need to be taking into account. Do you need to be growing your board in a particular way. And sort of what terms to be aware of and how that can impact your future raises and the, the growth of the company going forward. Sort of horror stories and, and war stories about things that, things not to do, um, traps not to fall into.
Jacqueline Shaw
Founder, The Canerow Company
My name’s Jacqueline Shaw. I am the CEO and Founder of The Canerow Company. The Canerow Company is a plant-based biodegradable hair extension company that is handmade in Africa, using banana tree fiber. As a female Founder, the kind of challenges that I have found is being understood, especially as a black female Founder. So I’ve got a double whammy on that one. And being in rooms where there’s many people who don’t look like me and many people who are not my same cultural group, they’re not my same gender either, they don’t have the same lived experiences and so those are the things I’m trying to get to understand my life, my experiences and the perspective or the lens that I live through, see through. Yeah, so some of the investors here today have been shown with me or shown on the stage knowing what they want, it’s not about what you want, but knowing what they want.
Haley Cross
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Uh, so I’m Haley Cross. I’m a Partner in the Emerging Companies Team in the Corporate Department at Mishcon. Um, and I work with, um, start-ups and high growth companies, helping them to raise money. In terms of my advice, I think, um, one of the things that’s come up a couple of times today, during one of the earlier sessions and in the final session today was around making sure that founders also do their due diligence. So when they’re looking for investment, obviously the investors are always doing their due diligence but founders need to make sure that they’re looking at their investors and making sure they are choosing the right people to go on their journey.
Charlotte Ridley
Founder, Memorify
Hi I’m Charlotte. I’m the Founder and CEO of Memorify and we’re a company that is trying to connect people to the joy of their past memories. I think there’s no denying it that there is different challenges that female founders face but I’ve just been able to close my investment round, I secured an Innovate UK grant and I think that as much as there is a lot against us, there’s also a lot of great organisations and, um, institutions and funds that are really trying to help level the playing field and I think that I am really starting to see a turn or a shift in the last kind of twelve months or so, around the perception around female founders. I mean there was a fantastic statistic that came out by the London Stock Exchange only a few weeks ago that said the number of female founders is scaling past the kind of fifty million revenue mark. It’s increased by 80% in one year and I think that’s the statistics that we really need to be shouting about because actually we make for fantastic investments. If you look at the profile of a women, there’s lots of grey lovely nurturing aspects to us but we are incredibly organised, we’re very methodical, we forward plan. There’s lots of great attributes that actually make us really fantastic leaders and actually the return of investment that investors are seeing from female founds specifically is just increasing exponentially.
Elliot Moss
Partner and Chief Brand Officer, Mishcon de Reya
So the impact that we’re hoping to achieve for the Arc, for Oxford and Cambridge and into London as well as we think about that is that we bring to life the role models that are doing great things, that we share learnings and that we help the next generation of female founders do their thing and indeed, ensure that the investment community knows just what fantastic investment opportunities there are here.
Anna Winter
Founder, Auralitica
Absolutely, so my name is Anna Winter and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Auralitica. Auralitica is creating the next generation of use by dates. So if you are looking at chicken breast or a steak, instead of having to just trust that static date, that that’s actually when the food goes off by, we’re going to be able to create a sticker that can change colour to tell you when your food’s actually in the process of going off by looking at the chemicals in the food, not just the storage conditions. Absolutely, it, the event has been refreshing. It’s been so good to see once some almost brutal honesty about like what is the state for female founders and how do you approach these conversations in an honest way, but also showing that there is hope and there is a drive for these conversations to happen. From an investor point of view, from a founder point of view, from the general support system around being a founder. We know it’s a real issue, but talking about it and bringing it into the light allows us to address it more plainly and allows us to actually, hopefully make real change. The investor landscape thus far has been very interesting. Um, I’m lucky that I’m working on a product that is very tangible and people can see the direct benefit of it to themselves, but it’s still hard to kind of, to get those first tracks in the door. But it’s amazing what the power of warm connections and having some very, an incredible community supporting you specifically as a female founder, having other female founders back you, having female investors, and open up doors and just continuing those conversations has proved to be invaluable. Uh, now Mishcon de Reya did a spectacular job and I’m very happy that I was able to join.
James Libson
Managing Partner, Mishcon de Reya
But what I would like to see is a much better environment for all entrepreneurs in the UK and lots of the systemic barriers to being able to innovate and grown need to be removed, need to be looked at and at least, uh, moderated and the environment for growth in the country has to be supported in a much more fundamental way. The government says it’s committed to it, uh, and it’s important that we see actual evidence of that commitment over the next five years. We’ll do everything that we can to help, uh, but we need policy as well as, um, as well as a private sector working hard towards that, that objective.