Solving the funding issue for female founders

Jana Hlistova

Mar 31, 2024

Welcome to our #230 weekly newsletter.

“For women taking control of their financial future”

-Jana Hlistova

From The Purse

In this week’s newsletter, we highlight the Labour government’s plans to tackle the ‘funding issue’ for female and ethnic minority founders. They also aim to address the financial exclusion of women.

In the meantime, a new taskforce has been set up to create a £250m fund aimed at providing capital to female founders. This is music to our ears!

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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.

I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.

Until next week,

Jana

Solving the funding issue for female founders

The Labour government has announced plans to direct more funds to female founders and review the financial exclusion of women. Meanwhile, a new taskforce has been setup to help launch a £250m fund aimed at female founders in the UK.

The funding stats are dire for female founders: only 1% of VC capital is directed to their startups in the UK.

But the Labour party has announced plans to change that as the UK prepares for a General Election end of this year or in early 2025.

If the Labour party wins the next General Election, their aim is to set targets for funding female-led businesses through the state-owned British Business Bank (BBB) and to launch a review of the financial exclusion of women, as reported by The Guardian.

The initiatives announced by the shadow City minister Tulip Siddiq, will include:

An ‘overall investment allocation target’ towards businesses led by women, as well as those led by ethnic minority founders.
The BBB will also be required to issue reports on the diversity of applicants it considered for funding.
Launch a review of the female financial exclusion to identify the barriers to women for reaping the benefits their male peers receive. And this will be aimed at tackling poor take-up of financial advice and the root causes of the ‘gender pensions gap’.

Meanwhile, a new taskforce was announced…

…to create a £250m funding pot for female founders. The aim is to address the shortage of equity capital and debt available to women who are building businesses.

Led by Debbie Wosskow (a serial entrepreneur) and Hannah Bernard (Head of Business Banking for Barclay’s Bank) the Invest in Women Taskforce will aim to raise capital from a combination of pension funds and other private sector investors, as well as government monies.

This follows similar initiatives including the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship and the women-led high growth enterprise taskforce, chaired by Starling bank founder, Anne Boden.

According to Debbie Wosskow:

“Nobody has had funding as the front and central problem to solve in any of these initiatives and that is the one thing this Invest in Women taskforce is set out to do… to create the biggest funding pot in the world, £250m, to back female entrepreneurs and to make the UK the biggest place in the world to be a female founder.”

Solving the ‘funding issue’ which is a systemic problem experienced by female and ethnic minorities founders, should finally start to move the needle (we hope!).

What next? (Re) listen to The Purse Podcast:

Financial news

Gold jumps $2,220+/oz, hitting a fresh ATH although money continues to flow out of the Gold ETFs. With an 9.1% increase in March 2024, this marks Gold’s best monthly performance since July 2020, when it climbed 10.9% amid massive monetary & fiscal stimulus during COVID-19 pandemic.
US economy grew faster than first thought at 3.4% annual rate. The BEA said the faster growth was thanks to upward revisions to consumer spending and non-residential fixed investment.
US and European equity market volatility is at multi-year lows. But traders bet the US election will unsettle the market calm.
The recent brutal rise in commodity prices is perhaps a harbinger that stock market is now seeing a rotation from highly valued Tech into value commodity stocks.
UK recession confirmed after weakest non-pandemic year since 2009. Excluding the year 2020, which was affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this is the weakest annual change in real GDP since the financial crisis in 2009.
Reddit has already warned in its S-1 filing about its own meme stock status. And that's exactly what happened. Reddit is the new meme stock. It rose by 30% on Monday and pulled other meme stocks up with it. GameSt
Donald Trump's net worth has jumped $4.7bn this year to $7.8bn. Trump is now richer than George Soros. Trump Social’s public debut puts all other meme stocks to shame
No ESG and 'energy pragmatism.' The focus has changed completely: BlackRock’s Larry Fink warns about a retirement “crisis” in this year's annual letter to CEOs. The miracles of technology have extended our lives but there is no dialogue in America or most places about, ‘Can we afford that?

Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs

Bitcoin is up over the week, having risen over 10% the past seven days. Its price now stands at $69,966, per CoinGecko—still below the nearly $74,000 all-time high it touched earlier this month.
Ethereum and Solana have also risen in price over the past week. Ethereum is up by slightly over 4% and is now priced at $3,494. Solana is up over 12% and is coming in at $196.23.
Dogecoin, the ninth biggest digital asset is up nearly 45% in seven days and is now priced at $0.208.
Bitcoin Cash, the 15th biggest coin, has shot up in value over the week by over 30% and by over 50% in 30 days.
Dogwifhat, which is this week's best-performing cryptocurrency. The Solana-based token is up nearly 100% over the week and is priced at $4.52.
Shiba Inu, the Dogecoin-competitor has jumped over 10% in value the past seven days, sitting at $0.00003 early Saturday.
Other memes comandeering the spotlight include Solana-based Bonk and Pepe, which are up 23% and 6%, respectively.

Coffee Break? Read This

We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and janicka. We do no provide investment advice. Please do your own research or speak to a financial adviser.