Playfair Capital and top VC funds support female founders in Europe with remote office hours

Today, investor Playfair Capital and 200 of the world’s leading venture capital funds will hold remote office hours for more than 300 female founders from across Europe as part of the 12th edition of ‘Female Founder Office Hours’.

Funds participating include Balderton, Cherry, LocalGlobe, MMC, Northzone, Notion, Plug & Play, Seedcamp, SpeedInvest, and Target Global.

The event is also backed by Carta and Microsoft for Startups.

Women raised just 3 per cent of total venture funding in Europe in 2023. 

Each participating founder will be matched with four investors for one-to-one meetings to discuss their tech idea, seek advice or pitch for investment. This structure breaks down the barriers to investment by removing the need for warm introductions.

Every investor participating in the initiative has pledged to take on one founder from each edition for ongoing mentoring, giving depth as well as breadth of support.

The previous eleven editions saw a total of 10,000 individual mentoring sessions with over 2,500 founders and 200+ investors taking part. To date, 25 per cent of founders have gone on to raise funding after attending an event, with recent success stories including XO Life, GlycanAge, Evariste, MI:RN, Mamio, Hydro Grid, and Naq Cyber. 

In 2024, £194 million has been raised by companies who have attended a previous edition of FFOH.

Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital, shared: 

“I’m delighted that Microsoft and Carta are lending their support to Female Founder Office Hours, recognising the challenges that persist in the market for women founders and the role events like FFOH play in addressing them. 

Every FFOH event expands the pipeline of women-founded companies for several hundred investors and, ultimately, delivers hundreds of millions in funding.”

According to Emma Steele, Partner at Ascension: 

“The Playfair office hours have been a fantastic way to connect with inspiring female founders from the start. We’ve also had the privilege of meeting one of our founding teams, Organise, during some of the very first Female Founder Office Hours.”