Fundraising Stories with Female Founders

Join Julia Elliott Brown, Founder & CEO of Enter the Arena as she sits down with Nicola Piercy, the Founder of Stripe and Stare, the world's most comfortable knickers sustainably sourced from trees. Nicola shares her life as a serial entrepreneur, from founding Stripe and Stare with co-founder Katie Lopes to getting £3.6million in investment.

Whilst gaining angel investment, Nicola experienced a devastating personal loss—her husband's unexpected passing. Despite the immense grief, Nicola persevered, meeting investors and navigating the complexities of running a business. Her journey shows the strength, dedication, and resilience required to overcome adversity in both personal and professional realms.

Since then, Stripe and Stare went on to gain their first major venture capital round of £1.8m from the Business Growth Fund as well as a further shareholder and customer “crowdfund”.

Tune in to discover the unique journey of Stripe and Stare, the brand's commitment to sustainability, and the remarkable story of Nicola Piercy's triumph over personal tragedy while building a globally recognised and eco-conscious business.

• How to navigate VC term sheets
• Why you need to do due diligence on investors
• How to not take investor rejection personally

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Francesca Hodgson, the Co-founder and Managing Director of GoodBox, which helps non-profit organisations to take cashless donations, by providing them with contactless charity donation boxes, along with software to help them track, analyse and grow the amount of money they raise.

Francesca worked as a graphic designer straight after university for World Cancer Research Fund and has always been a creative at heart. After this, she spent nearly 10 years in corporate social responsibility, managing events. Francesca worked with 200+ charities in this setting, and eventually met her business partner. They founded GoodBox after spotting a major gap in the charity sector. They secured an Angel investor at the start, who supported them with the money to create and test the tech which allows charities to take contactless donations.

After some success with the initial concept and trial, Francesca and the team needed to raise further money to take the business to the next level. Crowdfunding was the next step through Seedrs. The first crowdfund was in 2018 and was for £2.6m, and the most recent in 2019 for £2.4m.

Francesca’s approach to investment was to take networking to the next level. She knew that by reaching out to her network, using LinkedIn and finding others who she might be interested in investing in the business’s mission, she’d find supporters for GoodBox. As well as that, GoodBox were a part of three accelerators that helped the business with invaluable guidance and access to investors.

In this episode of Fundraising Stories with Women Entrepreneurs, you’ll discover...

• Why you should share all of your ideas openly, without being shy or fearing copycats
• Why you shouldn’t let confidence stop you, you’ll always wonder ‘what if
• Why it’s okay to fail

Being new to the world of investment, Lisa mapped out local experts in the North East of England that could fill certain knowledge gaps. It was after discovering who could add value to the business that she “accidentally” found her Angel investors and went on to successfully close her round with £225K of funding.

Listen to Lisa’s investment journey to find out what she learned along the way and her tips that might help you with your own fundraising endeavours.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The value of having advisors from the start
• Why you should think of raising investment as a sales process
• How to select the right route to investment

Being an entrepreneur is an incredibly turbulent journey. Polly McMaster is the founder of modern luxury workwear brand, The Fold, and she’s been experiencing the highs and lows since 2011. As Polly says in this episode, “that's something you have to have your eyes wide open to, when you go into it”.

So how did Polly approach her fundraising strategy and stay sane throughout the process? All is revealed as she talks to our founder and CEO Julia Elliott Brown about her experiences.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why a simple approach to raising investment is key
• How to deal with the immense stress of fundraising
• Understanding when you just need to get the deal over the line

Like many women starting businesses, the motivation for Rebekah Brown’s entrepreneurship, MPowder, was in response to her own experiences and spotting a gap in the market. She was struggling with a multitude of symptoms during perimenopause and felt there was barely any information on how to deal with it.

Since then, Rebekah has listened to the stories of many women to understand midlife better, launching several supplements to help enhance the stages of menopause. Rebekah credits the co-creation community as the driving force behind the success of MPowder. As consumers feedback and share their stories, they help the team understand what they should be thinking about next.

So, how hard was it to find investors ready to fund a menopause business? Rebekah reveals all about her experiences as she talks through her fundraising journey with our founder and CEO, Julia Elliott Brown.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• How accelerators can help you begin conversations with investors
• Why it's normal to feel confused by the investment world
• Why storytelling during pitches is the key to getting investment