Playfair Capital presents our Female Founders Office Hours initiative

Our Mission

Collaboration is Queen. At Playfair, we believe in the power of bringing people together to solve issues and make us all stronger. As investors, we recognise the potential for entrepreneurship to improve society, but this will not be fully realised until we achieve real equality in access to startup funding. That’s why we have always been strong advocates of the power of collaboration. We are using this principle to address the continuing headwinds for women founders in tech.

Female Founder Office Hours (FFOH) is one of the largest office hours initiative for women founders in Europe.

Started by the Playfair Capital team in 2019, FFOH has already brought together 700 founders for 2,800 one-to-one mentoring and pitch meetings with over 90 investors across five editions to date.

We recognise that there is no single quick fix for redressing the lack of funding for women founders; we need everyone to play their part. That is why we are hosting collaborative office hours with dozens of other VCs, diversity groups and advocates. We hope to build on their great work, helping to connect the dots between founders and investors.

Playfair has committed to running the main initiative three times a year to ensure continued support for women founders. In addition, all investors participating in the initiative have pledged to take on one founder from each edition for ongoing mentoring, giving depth as well as breadth of support.

The problems we’re focussing on are:

A lack of funding and support for women founders in tech
Barriers to accessing investors, particularly outside of London

Our solution has four pillars:

Access. No warm intros needed.
Remote. Geography is not a barrier.
Collaboration. All investors, groups and initiatives working together.
Founder-driven. Ask for advice, feedback, funding, or introductions.

If you would like to dive deeper into our reasons for launching the Female Founder Office Hours initiative and for a wealth of resources, please visit our dedicated Notion page.

You can register your interest for the next event here and we will be in touch when applications open.

September 2021

Female Founder Office Hours (September Workshop Edition)

8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th September Three Dots Horizontal

We’re proud to announce Female Founders Office Hours: September Workshops Edition where we will be hosting weekly hour-long workshops for women founders to hear about Hiring, Fundraising, Legals and PR from experts in our network and ask any questions they may have.

This event is aimed at Seed and Series A stage women-led startups.

You can register here for the events:

8th September: Legals with Hayley Cross, Taylor Vinters — register here
15th September: PR with Nick Braund, Words + Pixels — register here
22nd September: Fundraising with Amelia Armour, Amadeus Capital Partners — register here
29th September: Hiring with Joe Thornton, Playfair Capital — register here

May 2021

Female Founder Office Hours (remote 5th edition)

Thursday 6th May Three Dots Horizontal

On Thursday 6th May 2021, Playfair Capital and 90 of the world’s leading venture capital funds, including Atomico, Creandum, Dawn, Balderton, EQT, Notion, LocalGlobe, Partech and Sequoia spent 270 collective hours meeting and advising women founders. In total, we facilitated 990 office hour meetings, 140 female founders and 90 VC investors from Europe’s leading funds.

Please visit our Notion page here for further resources and our blog summarising the event here.

The next Female Founder Hour Offices event will be held in November 2021 and we will be opening applications in Autumn. Note we welcome applications from any Europe-based female founder with a tech company at the pre-Series A stage. You can register your interest for the next event here and we will be in touch when applications open.

November 2020

Female Founders Investor Office Hours - November

Female Founder Office Hours (remote 4th edition)

Thursday 5th & 12th November Three Dots Horizontal

On Thursday 5th November and Thursday 12th November, another 160 female founders had the opportunity to meet over 60 investors from the UK's leading VCs for one hour of remote office hours to discuss their business idea, ask for advice or pitch for investment. In total, Playfair Capital and Tech Nation facilitated 624 office hour meetings.

Please visit our Notion page here for further resources and our blog summarising the event here.

The next Female Founder Hour Offices event will be held in May 2021 and we will be opening applications in March 2021.

June 2020

Female Founder Office Hours (remote 3rd edition) - Event 2

Wednesday 24th June Three Dots Horizontal

We received so many applications for Female Founder Office Hours that we decided to put on a second event for another 100 female founders, with 30 more VCs joining Playfair Capital and Tech Nation on June 24th.

Across these two events combined there will be:

800 office hour meetings
200 female founders
200 hours of mentorship, support & pitching
60+ VC investors from the UK’s leading funds

Applications are closed for this June edition, and the next Female Founder Office Hours will be held in October with details to be shared in September.

Please visit our Notion page where we are collating all resources for female founders pre- and post- office hours here

Female Founder Office Hours (remote 3rd edition)

Thursday 4th June Three Dots Horizontal

Our third, remote edition of our collaborative Female Founder Investor Office Hours builds on the success of our events in February 2020 and November last year.

This time, we're going fully remote to broaden access to female founders across the country, supported by Tech Nation and 30 investors from the UK's leading VCs alongside the Playfair Capital team.

The primary aim of this initiative is mentorship & support, and secondary is fundraising. We hope that with time, the two will go hand-in-hand.

We welcome applications from any UK-based female founder whose business is tech and pre-Series A. We will do our best to accommodate as many founders as possible and provide support to all regardless. Applications will close at midnight on Sunday 24th May.

February 2020

Female Founder Office Hours (2nd edition)

Thursday 20th February Three Dots Horizontal

Our first investor office hours of the year builds on the success of our event in November last year.

As before, the Playfair Capital team will be joined by investors from other funds as we welcome up to 40 female founders to Warner Yard.

To finish the event, we’ve invited a female founder from our portfolio to deliver a keynote presentation on their journey so far – part advice, part inspiration.

October 2019

Female Founder Office Hours (1st edition)

Thursday 17th October Three Dots Horizontal

Our first ever Female Founder Office Hours event welcomed 45 founders and 11 investors to meet and connect in our Warner Yard office.