“I think the worst thing is every morning when you wake up as a founder and you pick up your phone, you think what will I discover that will ruin my day?”

While your business might not care what your gender is, significant discrepancies still exist between the number of female and male entrepreneurs. As Baroness Martha Lane Fox quite rightly proclaimed, ‘you cannot be what you cannot see’. 

And so we’ve gone and put four female entrepreneur powerhouses together on the same live stage. We’ve put the same questions to them and their answers are as diverse as they are. This episode on female leadership and equality for International Women’s Day is a real smorgasbord of insights from some of the UK's leading female founders. 

Get the expert investor perspective from Reshma Sohoni, co-founder of Seedcamp. The non-VC route founder Renée Elliott, founder of Planet Organic. Alex Depledge offers the perspective from a consumer facing tech enabled marketplace, with her startup Hassle. And finally our technology software entrepreneur, Alicia Navarro, whose company Skimlinks has raised over $25 million helping publishers monetise advertising. 

“If being a woman is the hardest thing you have to deal with in your journey, sorry, you’re fucking lucky. Because that is the easiest challenge you're gonna have to deal with. If you can't handle that, if you can’t handle a couple of dickheads in the corner that belittle you, you're just not going to make it. I'm sorry, but that is the truth. It is hard and relentless. And if you can't handle people that make you feel like shit, that's like peanuts in the corner.”

We chat about:

• Why not every business should take VC funding
• The toughest moments of their entrepreneurial journeys so far
• Their different perspectives on funding and financing a business
• How to choose your role models

Links:

• https://www.secretleaders.com/reshma-sohoni
• https://www.secretleaders.com/alicia-navarro
• https://www.secretleaders.com/alex-depledge
• https://www.secretleaders.com/renee-elliot

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