Funding Her Future: Insights from women who invest
Female-led startups continue to receive a disproportionately small share of venture funding - but why does this gap persist, and what can founders do to overcome it?
Join a panel of experienced female investors as they share candid insights into the realities of fundraising today. Drawing from both sides of the table, they’ll unpack the challenges, biases, and opportunities shaping the funding landscape - and, importantly, what founders can do to improve their chances of success.
This session is designed to demystify the investment process, provide practical strategies, and empower female founders with the knowledge and confidence to raise capital.
What you’ll learn🎯:
How female founders can navigate and overcome bias in fundraising
What investors are really looking for when backing female founders and how to stand out with confidence
Practical strategies to strengthen your fundraising approach and own your narrative
How to avoid common pitfalls and turn challenges into advantages
Insights from investors who review hundreds of pitches - and what makes standout female founders shine
Who should attend⚡:
Female founders (pre-seed to Series A)
Anyone interested in understanding and addressing the funding gap
Meet the panel⭐
Ana Fernandez
Investor, Nauta
Ana has been part of Nauta’s London investment team since 2023 and helped lead our Series A investment into Unravel, recently ranked as the fastest growing UK travel company in the Sifted 100 rankings. She has a strong interest in vertical AI.
Prior to Nauta, Ana was an Associate in Equity Research at Goldman Sachs, where she spent three years. Within the Retail team, she covered major listed food retailers and food delivery players, including Tesco, Carrefour, Ocado, Deliveroo and Delivery Hero.
Ana holds a Masters in Chemistry (MChem) from the University of Oxford.
Deborah Gruenberger
Brand strategist, startup advisor, active angel investor & founder, The Spark
Deborah Gruenberger is the founder of The Spark, where she works with early-stage founders to shape their message, build investor-ready brands and strengthen their pitch.
Having built and run businesses in New York and London, and now investing in startups, she brings a 360° view of the founder journey - from building and positioning a business to communicating it clearly and securing funding.
Deborah is particularly passionate about supporting female and underrepresented founders, both through her angel investments as well as her work as a mentor across accelerators, venture programmes and university enterprise initiatives.
Suzanne Barker
Venture Banking Relationship Director, NatWest
Suzanne is a Relationship Director within NatWest’s newly established Venture Banking team, where she partners with start-ups that have raised institutional equity, supporting their growth and scaling journey. Her role encompasses making day-to-day transaction banking as seamless as possible, developing liquidity strategies to extend cash runways, supporting fundraising activities with complementary pre-profit lending, facilitating introductions to VC’s in the ecosystem and providing connectivity across the wider NatWest network.
Before joining NatWest, Suzanne spent time at JPMorgan, working in Global Corporate Banking across the UK and US, as well as in various Leveraged Finance roles with pan-European coverage.
Moderated by Jas Wilks
Founder, Lets Fund Her
Jas is the founder of Lets Fund Her, a global community of 10,000+ female entrepreneurs, on a mission to get more women the visibility and funding they deserve. Alongside this, she is Head of Growth at Scribe, helping founders find angel investors with data, and a Venture Scout for Ada Ventures, identifying underrepresented founders for early-stage investment.
About the hosts
We're the UK’s go-to platform for startup legals, funding, share options, SEIS/EIS and more.
Whether you're just starting out or gearing up for your next raise, SeedLegals is built to help founders move faster and smarter. Our tools make it simple to create and sign essential legal docs, close funding rounds, and reward your team – without burning time or cash on admin.
We’re trusted by 60,000+ startups and investors and power 1 in 6 early-stage funding rounds in the UK. If you're raising, hiring or just figuring out what’s next, we’re here to help you do it right.
Scribe is a private markets platform helping founders find investors, with data. To date, they’ve helped over 1,000 early-stage startups find investors, using their database of >850k individuals.
Scribe x SeedLegals (SeedLegals Boost)
Together, SeedLegals and Scribe have recently launched SeedLegals Boost - a package built to help founders secure SEIS/EIS faster, get their fundraising message in front of 800+ active investors via Scribe, and earn a SeedLegals Qualified badge to strengthen credibility in your pitch deck. Find out more here.
Event partners🤝
Lets Fund Her is a community of 10K+ female founders, on a mission to create visibility and funding opportunities to women-led businesses. We do this through content, events like pitch nights, and partnerships that connect founders with brands and investors.
Women in Tech® is an international organization on a mission to close the gender gap and to help women embrace technology.
They promote girls’ and women’s empowerment around the world, with a focus on Sustainable Development Goal 5b: harnessing technologies. With a Head Office in Paris, they are a Global Movement with chapters in 6 continents, counting over 200.000 members.
The aim is to educate, equip and empower women and girls with the necessary skills, confidence and opportunities to succeed in STEM career fields. They are the only organization for women in tech that has programs for every stage of a woman’s career lifecycle: from the classroom to the boardroom.