A leading investor has said more needs to be done to back female-founded businesses.
That’s the view of Laura Sisson, investment manager at YFM Equity Partners, who will be speaking at the second Tech Barometer event on February 2nd.
The popular event has been organised by tech specialist Fairmont Recruitment and will take place at their Manchester city centre office in Mosley Street. BusinessCloud’s executive editor Chris Maguire will host the discussion.
Sisson will join Kai Ojo, managing director at Planisware UK, and Jack Donohue, CEO and founder of Fairmont Recruitment, on the panel.
She said: “Recent publications and initiatives like the Rose Review and Fund Her North have had a fantastic impact on increasing awareness across the investment industry of the scale of the challenge that female founders face.
“There’s been some progress, but there are still huge barriers to be broken to enable female founders to have the footing and funding they need and deserve to scale their businesses and drive economic growth.”
Latest tech trends to be discussed at return of popular event
In the last year she worked on two completed investments in the North West for AI-based text data analytics platform Relative Insight and Manchester-based Summize.
Sisson said the UK tech landscape has continued to prosper despite the wider economic challenges but called for more to be done to support female-founded businesses.
Speaking ahead of next week’s Tech Barometer event she said: “Recent publications and initiatives like the Rose Review and Fund Her North have had a fantastic impact on increasing awareness across the investment industry of the scale of the challenge that female founders face.
“There’s been some progress, but there are still huge barriers to be broken to enable female founders to have the footing and funding they need and deserve to scale their businesses and drive economic growth.”
Speaking about the wider sector, Sisson said there was still an appetite to invest, especially in the Series A part of the market, where YFM normally operates.
“We saw the completion of investments into five new tech businesses in the second half of last year, three of which are based in the North West,” she said. “We would hope to maintain a good level of momentum into 2023.
“Conversations with HNWI’s (high-net-worth individuals) suggest the appetite to be backing young and ambitious scale-ups is still very much alive, particularly as ever strengthening tech ecosystems are contributing to their increased chance of success, though like investors, they’re keen for founders to be treating money like it’s their own and building a sustainable path to profitability.”
Speakers at the first Tech Barometer event in November 2022 were David Foreman, managing director of Praetura Ventures, Patience Tucker, CEO of wi-Q, and Donohue.