Ok this number has been rattling round my head all week 😤
Out of 136.
The UK just hit a record 80 tech unicorns... worth £242 billion between them. Third biggest unicorn nation in the world, behind only the US and China. Genuinely huge. And then you get to the founders and only 8 of 136 are women. 6%.
I sat with that for a minute because it's not even a "we're getting there slowly" number is it. It's a "we're barely in the room" number.
And here's the bit that stings more - it's not that the ideas aren't there. I talk to brilliant women building brilliant things every single week. The pipeline isn't the problem. The access to serious capital is. The rooms where the big cheques get written still look a certain way.
I keep coming back to what it actually costs us. Not just the women who don't get funded... but everything they'd have built. The jobs, the products, the whole thing that just never happens.
So I want to hear from you...
Does that number surprise you, or does it feel about right from where you're sitting? 👀
If you've raised - or tried to - what actually got in the way?
And what would genuinely move the needle here... is it money, networks, who's doing the deciding, all of it?
Tell me. I'm all ears 💬