ESEY: Championing the Next Generation of Female Founders
Championing the Next Generation of Female Founders
Part of the Investec ESEY Awards 2026 | Co-hosted by OPUS and the British Business Bank, sponsor of the Female Founder category
The funding gap isn't just a statistic. It's a series of rooms female founders were never invited into. Only a fraction of the capital deployed in the UK each year reaches female-led businesses - not for a lack of ambition, ideas or ability, but for a lack of access.
As part of the Investec ESEY Awards 2026, OPUS and the British Business Bank are opening the doors to one of those rooms. An evening dedicated to supporting, celebrating and connecting female founders with the investors, fund managers and ecosystem leaders shaping the future of entrepreneurship.
📅 Thursday 1 October | From 6:30PM
Expect a room built with intent: founders at every stage, the people writing the cheques and raising the funds, and the voices shaping policy and direction across the UK startup ecosystem. Everyone in the room is there because they have something to contribute to what comes next.
Two panels, one honest conversation
Investing in Female Founders - the people making the capital decisions on what they're actually looking for, where the emerging opportunities are, and how the funding gap closes in practice rather than in principle.
From Pitch to Growth - founders who've raised and scaled, on the parts that don't make the press release: what worked, what it cost them, and the advice they'd give their earlier selves.
Rather than creating an echo chamber, we are curating a panel of speakers with deliberately different perspectives and experiences, to encourage authentic debate, practical insight and thought-provoking discussion.
Then the room does the rest
The floor opens for your questions, and from there the evening becomes what it was designed for. A space entirely for connection - a night where conversations over drinks could turn into the introduction that shortcuts six months, the chat that becomes a first meeting, the answer you have not been able to find anywhere else.
This is what access looks like when it is put in one room on purpose.
Championing the next generation of female founders isn't a gesture. It's how the next decade of British business gets built.