Earlier this week influencer and entrepreneur Grace Beverley announced her activewear brand TALA had raised £5m in a Series A funding round.
If you don’t know the 27-year-old she has one million followers on Instagram, 165, 000 followers on LinkedIn and 171,000 followers on TikTok.
She established TALA in 2019 while studying at the University of Oxford with an emphasis on sustainability over fast fashion.
The startup prides itself on being female-founded with a female CEO and majority female leadership positions.
In the three years since embarking on their first funding round, the company has grown ten-fold, remained profitable in a tough marketplace and delivered on every promise it made in its previous pitch deck.
A slam dunk for investment you’d think. Not quite.
It took Beverley SEVEN months to close the latest Series A investment from Pembroke VCT, Venrex and Active Partners – all of which were already shareholders in the business!
Writing on LinkedIn, Beverley, said: “In a country where just two per cent of VC funding in the UK goes to female-founded businesses – I don’t underestimate how statistically almost impossible it is to reach this stage of funding, let alone a business lifecycle.”
It’s hard to think of a more damning statistic in UK business than this two per cent fact.
Despite TALA’s compelling growth story, combined with Beverley’s high profile as an influencer, the founder has lifted the lid on her challenges of fundraising.
She said: “It’s like you’re driving down a motorway but also building the car at the same time and also having to make sure the people in the car are doing okay and maybe also feeling car sick.”
The entrepreneur added: “When it comes to due diligence there is never a stone in the business unturned. You have to be constantly hitting new targets whilst running the business alongside which is actually the worst thing in the world to be completely honest.
“That being said, I will never take this moment for granted. This is a HUGE moment for the team, and we’ll be celebrating in the office this week but it also goes so far beyond me.”
Fred Ursell led Pembroke VCT’s investment into TALA and identified the three reasons that convinced them to invest – team, growth and brand.
“We got excited for a few reasons,” he said on LinkedIn.
“1. Team – Founded by the impressive Grace Beverley, who alongside CEO Morgan Fowles is building something special, we feel we are backing a world class leadership team.
“2. Growth – Pembroke has been investing into consumer brands since 2012 and we haven’t seen metrics like TALA’s.
“3. Brand – Tala’s brand has already expanded categories (from athleisure into swim and loungewear) with relative ease, there is much more expansion to come across categories, sales channels and geographies.”