Fundraising Stories with Female Founders Julia Elliott Brown

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.

From marketing agency owner to SaaS tech entrepreneur, Lisa Eaton didn’t have the intention to raise investment when she started up Fabric Academy, an online training provider for marketers. However, it was when she realised the business potential and her ambition to dominate the space globally that she started looking at the equity investment route.

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.

From being in turmoil and struggling to eat and sleep, to Kate Middleton wearing a dress from the brand; elevating the business to new heights. All in the same year. Oh, and add in raising over £11m in funding, and a couple of pregnancies. Not easy!

Sheila Hogan is the founder of Biscuit Tin, a TechDeath company and digital vault that securely holds information and makes managing our affairs when we come to the end of our life easier. With an extensive background in tech and business strategy, Sheila secured grant funding from Scottish Enterprise, utilising her skills in writing business cases. She initially thought it was possible to get plenty of funding just from having the idea for the business, but this wasn’t the case.

Cindy Gallop founded MakeLoveNotPorn, the world’s first user-generated, human-curated ‘social sex’ video-sharing platform. Over 1 million people have signed up from 200+ countries, generating around £60K revenue per month despite many business growth challenges involved in marketing a SexTech business.