• Version 10 of Europe-wide Feminine Founder Workplace Hours is a key milestone for Europe’s largest variety led founder initiative
• This occasion will convey collectively over 300 feminine founders and 150 VCs from a number of the world’s main funds
• The newest funding information exhibits that over £1.2bn has been raised by firms which have attended one of many earlier editions
• Since October 2019, Playfair’s workplace hours has delivered over 7,800 mentoring classes for girls founders throughout Europe

LONDON, 26 SEPTEMBER 2023:

On Thursday ninth November, 2023, Playfair and 150 of the world’s main enterprise capital funds, together with Atomico, Creandum, Headline, MMC, Northzone, Octopus, Partech, Plug & Play, Speedinvest and TriplePoint will probably be holding distant workplace hours for greater than 300 feminine founders from throughout Europe.

Allotting with the necessity for heat introductions and breaking down the limitations to funding, every founder can have the chance to fulfill 4 buyers over one hour of distant workplace hours to debate their tech concept, search recommendation, pitch for funding or be mentored.

The occasion is being held by Playfair as a part of their long-term dedication to deal with the gender imbalance in enterprise funding and can proceed the usage of AI matching know-how. This know-how improves the relevance of founder to investor matching, and will increase the chance of related conversations and, finally, funding being secured.

The earlier 9 editions noticed a complete of seven,800 particular person mentoring classes with over 2,000 founders and 200+ buyers collaborating. So far, 25% of founders have gone on to boost funding after attending an occasion, with current success tales together with Spottitt, Muse Finance, Daye, Whoppah, Shopper, Maxwellia, SideQuest VR and Materials Evolution. This quantities to £1.2B in complete funding that has been disclosed.

Valentina Milanova, Founder and CPO of Daye who just lately raised a £10m Sequence A, commented:

“Collaborating in Playfair Capital’s Feminine Founder Workplace Hours was a game-changer for our firm. The assist, mentorship, and networking alternatives supplied by this initiative have been invaluable in serving to us safe the funding we wanted to scale our enterprise. I’m a robust advocate for FFOH and imagine it performs an important position in levelling the taking part in area for girls and AFAB people within the startup ecosystem.”

Murvah Iqbal, Founder and CEO of Hived who just lately raised a £10m Sequence A, commented:

“I participated within the 2021 FFOH and it was a terrific first expertise for me to pitch to a number of completely different buyers the place in any other case I wouldn’t have entry to. Everyone knows the enterprise world works with heat intros however the place do you begin in the event you come from a background much like mine the place your community isn’t that sturdy when beginning off. Quickly after the FFOH we managed to shut our first funding spherical (we even acquired to IC with Playfair who we met on the FFOH) and subsequently have managed to safe over £15m of VC funding.”

Liz Gilligan, Founder and CEO of Materials Evolution who just lately raised a £15m Sequence A, commented:

“We met our lead investor — Playfair — by means of an FFOH session. That one dialog over quarter-hour secured our first spherical of funding and since then we now have gone on to boost a £15m Sequence A. Initiatives like FFOH enhance the probabilities of connecting with the suitable buyers to your firm and I’d encourage any lady founder elevating, or interested by elevating, to use.”

Chris Smith, Managing Companion of Playfair, commented:

“We’re now into our fifth yr of operating FFOH throughout Europe and I’m delighted to see the continued willingness of funds to lean into this initiative and the unimaginable influence that collaboration amongst buyers at this scale delivers. Reaching £1.2bn in complete funding raised by founders who attended these occasions and listening to success tales like these from Valentina, Murvah and Liz is nice, however we nonetheless have much more to do and stay dedicated to this initiative for the long run.”

For extra data and to make an software to attend the occasion please go to: https://playfair.vc/neighborhood.php

-ENDS-

About Playfair

Playfair is a generalist VC fund with a contrarian strategy to pre-seed know-how investing. Primarily based in London, Playfair invests throughout the UK and Europe with an deliberately excessive conviction, low quantity strategy: making 6–8 investments a yr out of its third $70m fund and preserving time, capital and useful resource to assist firms post-investment. Playfair has backed 70+ firms since 2013, together with Thought Machine, Andela, Mapillary, Recycleye and Orca AI.

https://playfair.vc/