When it comes to business, it seems women have another financial hurdle to scale, other than equal pay and ascending to the heights of a board-level salary. Despite women-led SMEs adding around £70 billion to the UK economy and female entrepreneurs being more capital-efficient, women are still half as likely to start a business as men, with access to finance being a key stumbling block. With this in mind, the City of London Corporation has funded Angel Academe’s ‘Entrepreneur Academe’ programme to help women access finance for their businesses – the programme will help women ‘go big’ in a broad sense with their ventures, and specifically encourage and enable them to pitch for finance.

Entrepreneur Academe is a programme with the aim of making a select group of particularly exciting female entrepreneurs investment-ready by giving them access to a diverse and supportive ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’. During the programme, the women are exposed to the idea of angel investing, meet potential female investors and benefit from a broad range of business support to make their ventures more appealing to investors. The programme also works on entrepreneurs’ funding pitches, encouraging high confidence levels and a driven approach to securing finance for their businesses. Collectively, the businesses have already raised over £1 million in investment, as well as substantially increasing their turnover and creating new jobs. The programme is now open for new applications. More information here, http://angelacade.me/entrepreneur-academe/

Sarah Turner, the founder of Angel Academe commented; “I set up Angel Academe to encourage other women like me to become angel investors and mentors. Professional and entrepreneurial women are woefully under-represented in the start-up support ecosystem (especially as angel investors) but have plenty of value to add. Working with City of London Corporation on Entrepreneur Academe has enabled us to deploy our powerful network of predominantly (but not only) women advisors for the benefit of some very talented female founders. Working with them from the early stages of their entrepreneurial journeys, helping them become investment-ready and seeing some of them secure funding already has been a thrilling journey.”

Entrepreneur Academe is part of the City of London Corporation’s ongoing commitment to support enterprise and small businesses both in the City and its neighbouring boroughs. David Pack, partnerships manager at the City of London Corporation commented; “Small businesses are vital to our economy and we need to ensure that female entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to be able to contribute to growth. With women-led SMEs already adding around £70 billion to the economy, it is exciting to see the impact these businesses will have as a result of the initiative.”

As well as financial up-skilling, the programme will also provide overall business mentoring (with access to over 60 mentor members) in the areas of business planning, leadership, technology, marketing/PR and sales, product development, analytics and investment readiness. The course will also provide an opportunity to network, build relationships, learn from other people’s experiences and share their own.

Watch a video about Entrepreneur Academe