Beyond Funding, Why Mentorship is the Key to Unlocking Female Founders’ Potential

Beyond Funding, Why Mentorship is the Key to Unlocking Female Founders' Potential | Midven

Reading time: 5 minutes

The 51% Club

The Fortuna Fellowship: A New Way to Invest in Female Founders

Why Mentorship Matters

Conclusion

For female founders, attracting and securing investment is such a challenge that it’s taking away from the true value of the founder-investor relationship. Mentoring, when tailored and meaningful, can be even more powerful than money in helping businesses scale. That said, the two things do have to go hand-in-hand if we want to power up the UK’s economy and get more female-led businesses reaching their potential, and that’s exactly why the Fortuna Fellowship was born… We speak to Tara Attfield-Tomes, Founder of The 51% Club about why initiatives such as this need to exist.

At the end of last year, we saw the dire “2% of VC funding going to female-founded businesses” stat get even worse. Who knew it was possible, but the 2% became 1.8% in Q4 2024, despite the moves being made to encourage more gender-smart investing. It’s a tough stat to stomach, especially when it comes alongside the Invest in Women Taskforce securing £255 million for a ‘fund of funds’ to better support female-led ventures. The money is there, the founders are there, so why is there such a disconnect? 

When you have a 2% stat dominating the headlines it, of course, fuels outrage – but it also fuels misdirection for founders. The reality is that 2% (now 1.8%) is disgustingly unfair in comparison with male investment, but there’s also a reality that VC funding isn’t for everyone. In fact, let’s be even more honest: investment isn’t for everyone. Women absolutely need money to grow their businesses, but debt finance, crowdfunding, grant funding, and actually just selling “stuff” to generate revenue is being overlooked in favour of whipping women up into a frenzy about the 1.8%. 

The 51% Club

As an expert in female entrepreneurship and investment, and advisor to both businesses and support services, that’s why I set up The 51% Club. Women have ambition that matches – and often surpasses – their male counterparts, and yet the landscape is still a minefield of inequality, unconscious bias, and lack of opportunity. There’s a role for people like me to play in challenging the existing status quo, but also just creating a whole new way of doing business: where equity sits at the forefront and the rulebook is ripped up in favour of better – and fairer – support for founders. But all of this has to sit around education: proper education about what’s out there and available for amazing female entrepreneurs, and what’s the most relevant for their business, their ambition, and the current stage they’re at. 

The Fortuna Fellowship: A New Way to Invest in Female Founders

When speaking to Midven’s investment team, I knew there was a perfect synergy between how we both saw the female funding landscape. There are so many (too many, in my opinion) accelerators, incubators, and business support services pushing “investment readiness” to the masses. Often, these programmes have tens (even hundreds) of participants at any one time, whose businesses haven’t been properly vetted to see if they’re even investable in the first place. Worse than that, founders aren’t being told how investment really works and the impact it will have on them day-to-day, and also long-term. 

The Fortuna Fellowship has been developed to combat this. It’s not for the masses; it’s for the few. A handful of businesses that have true scalable, global potential; to take them on a journey of building out the strongest and most sustainable business plan, ahead of seeking investment. Over 12 months, we’ll take up to five founders through a completely tailored programme; including a tailored curriculum and practical workshops; regular ‘office hours’ with investors; access to a co-working space, with dedicated days working alongside mentors and industry experts; access to an advisory board; and so much more. At the end of the accelerator, founders will be able to pitch for a share of £2million investment. All of this will be underpinned by a mentor relationship for the founder, where they will be matched with someone who’s at the very top of their game – someone inspirational, knowledgeable, and also relatable. Mentoring, when done at the very top level, is so incredibly powerful and provides founders with an unrivalled level of support from someone they know has walked more than a mile in their shoes. 

Why Mentorship Matters

We’re reaching for the stars with these mentor matches. This isn’t a case of recruiting leaders from the business community and trying to make square pegs and round holes fit together. We’re asking founders for their dream mentor at the application stage and over the course of the first couple of months; after exploring their personality traits and founder psychology, we’ll have a better idea of who can truly help to take their business to the next level. After all, a scalable business is one thing, but a strong founder – who’s a sponge for learning – is what’s needed to drive it forward and really make investors sing. 

Typically, in a business sense, I think we often see mentoring as career driven. Someone young sitting down and getting advice from someone older, but in the entrepreneurial world it is so much more. Navigating the rollercoaster of founder life, the uncertainty of running a business, the complexities of the investment landscape, and often crippling self-doubt needs someone who’s experienced it and isn’t afraid to give you those home truths. Innovation isn’t fuelled by one mind: it’s a team effort and we really do see these founder-mentor relationships as being the start of a beautiful partnership. Even if not taking part in our accelerator, founders should be challenging their investors to adopt a similar approach, giving them the best chance of survival. 

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong: women don’t need more mentoring alone – we need money too – but I believe that when put together and tailored to the founder’s needs, we can create foundations for businesses ready to scale globally.

Applications have now opened for the Fortuna Fellowship – to find out more and apply, click here

Leading The 51% Club is Tara Attfield-Tomes, a multi-award-winning entrepreneur and PR expert. With over 16 years’ industry experience, Tara has a long track record of supporting female founders and underrepresented groups.

Tara is also Co-Chair of The Lifted Project Birmingham, a regional growth board focused on helping female founders scale and bringing investment opportunities into the region.