In early April, serial entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow took the mic at a meeting of the UK government’s Women and Equalities Committee to talk about why “the UK is currently a pretty terrible place to be a female entrepreneur” — and why a government on a mission to drive growth should care about that.
“If women founded and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, that would add an extra £250bn to the UK economy,” she said over a video call, reporting findings from the landmark Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship two years ago.
“We need that money. It is in the interests of founders, investors and government to make sure that we get better at doing this.”
In the past few years, the amount of equity investment going to female founders has been decreasing — down from 2.5% in 2023 to 2% in 2024. The rise of AI isn’t helping matters. Just 7% of AI founders in the UK are women, and the average fundraise for a female-led AI startup team in the UK was £853k, compared to £5.3m for a male-led AI startup team, according to data platform Beauhurst.
But Wosskow has a plan to funnel more funding to female founders by investing in female fund managers. She has the backing of Britain’s first female chancellor to do it and, as of last week, a team to enact it.
“We’re calling it an ‘Avengers Assemble’ moment for women in tech,” she tells Sifted. “This hasn’t happened anywhere else in the world.”
Bootstrap 4F
Just over a year ago, Wosskow took on the role of co-chair, along with Barclays’ head of business banking Hannah Bernard, of the UK government’s Invest in Women Taskforce, an initiative set up to make the UK the best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur.
That starts with securing more capital for female fund managers to then invest into female founders, they thought.
“The thesis is that a female investor is twice as likely to back a woman as a male investor, and that on the other side of the table, only 15% of senior investment professionals in the UK are female,” Wosskow tells Sifted over a video call from a hotel room in Morocco. “So we know that women don’t hold the pens, and we also know that female GPs haven’t historically been backed.
“So we said ‘Okay, let’s create a pool of capital, run by a female-powered fund of funds manager, and let’s deploy that capital into backing female GPs, with a mandate for that money to go to women-led and mixed teams in the UK.”
They set out to raise a £250m ‘Women Backing Women’ fund of funds, first targeting pension funds, retail banks and insurers. After months banging on LPs’ doors, in October Wosskow and Bernard announced LPs had committed £255m to invest in female-led startups and female fund managers, £105m of which would go into the fund of funds.
It’s an overlooked part of the market; that means it’s a fantastic investment opportunity.
And last Wednesday at the London Stock Exchange, they announced they’d chosen the team to manage it, out of 25 applicants: Bootstrap 4F, led by Stephanie Heller and Fatou Diagne, founders of European growth debt fund Bootstrap Europe; and Kinga Stanislawska, investor and founder of the European Women in VC initiative.
It was a no-brainer to get involved, says Heller. “It’s an overlooked part of the market; that means it’s a fantastic investment opportunity.
“It’s about performance; the statistics show that female-led teams over-perform male led-teams by 35%. We want to be there, and capture that opportunity.”
Knocking on LP doors
The team is still after more money. “If you’re an LP, you’re not getting away from me fast,” says Wosskow, who’ll take on a new role as chair of the fund of funds.
Of the £255m committed, £105m — from M&G, Barclays and Visa Foundation — is for the fund of funds. The other £150m will be deployed by the LPs (Aviva, Morgan Stanley, British Business Bank and BGF), either into funds or directly into startups.
That leaves £145m still to raise for the fund of funds — which Wosskow hopes to close at target and begin deploying before the end of the year.
If you’re an LP, you’re not getting away from me fast
“This is real money, it’s new money, it’s money in the system that wasn’t there before,” says Wosskow. To raise the extra capital, her first targets are the signatories of the Mansion House Compact, an initiative to funnel more pension fund capital into unlisted equities.
The finer details
Since the fund of funds team was announced, Bootstrap 4F has received a lot of emails from female VCs and founders, says Wosskow. “The excitement from female GPs is very palpable.”
But there are still plenty of details to be ironed out. The team doesn’t yet know many of the specifics, such as what size cheques they will be writing, or how many. (Although it will involve “a proper portfolio construction that will meet investor requirements in terms of their returns target,” says Heller.)
Wosskow stresses they won’t be able to cornerstone funds given the size of the fund of funds, and it won’t all be deployed into emerging fund managers.
Fund managers will also need to be based in the UK to pitch for the capital. “If you’re a European female GP, you need to put boots on the ground in the UK in order for this money to be available to you. You can’t invest the money from Berlin or Amsterdam,” Wosskow says.
“We want to really encourage a female investment ecosystem in the UK.”
Bootstrap 4F’s investment committee will consist of Wosskow, Heller, Diagne and Stanislawska, along with fellow Bootstrap 4F partner and former EIF fund manager Matthias Ummenhofer and one independent advisor, Alex Branton, managing partner at secondaries fund Nodem Capital.
‘A genuine world first’
“At a time when globally, the D&I conversation is mixed, I think it’s a huge opportunity for the UK to double down on initiatives like this, which are about returns. They’re not charity; they’re about profit as well as purpose,” says Wosskow.
“We have had a lot of time with [UK chancellor Rachel Reeves] and her team, and we continue to do so — and I think that’s a real statement of intent. I think it is a priority of hers — and of the next mayor [of the City of London, Dame Susan Langley].”
“It’s being taken really seriously as a topic politically, and by the City [which promotes London as a global financial centre]. Doubling down on these initiatives is important for them — and for the UK.”
“It’s really about growth, returns and it’s an economic opportunity for all of us,” adds Heller. “For Bootstrap, we were looking at this, at this overlooked part of the market — and we thought we want to invest now for when it becomes the mainstream.”
“If you’re a female GP, you need to be in touch with us,” says Wosskow.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/women-backing-women-fund-of-funds/
