We play fair by founders

Giving you an unfair advantage, to take you from where you are to where you want to be

We’re a sector agnostic fund with a contrarian approach to pre-seed investing

92% of our portfolio recommend working with us

About

We look for visionary founders, with hustle, heart and humility, who see the world, not as it is, but as it could be

73% of our companies have successfully raised a Series A round

Portfolio

We combine financial capital, emotional intelligence and a willingness to do whatever’s required

Because we know it takes more than funding for a startup to survive and thrive; the right support goes beyond writing cheques

Approach

We’re an ecosystem player here for the long-term

It’s a step towards the tomorrow we all want to live in

Content

We’re committed to readdressing the gender imbalance in venture, by breaking down barriers and opening doors

Collaboration is Queen: Our female founder network has collectively raised £600m

FFOH

We believe that access to VC should be open and based on merit, we review each and every application

It’s never too early for an initial conversation

Pitch us

We play fair by founders

Giving you an unfair advantage, to take you from where you are to where you want to be

We’re a sector-agnostic fund with a contrarian approach to pre-seed investing

92% of our portfolio recommend working with us

About

We look for visionary founders, with hustle, heart and humility, who see the world, not as it is, but as it could be.

73% of our companies have successfully raised a Series A

Portfolio

We combine financial capital, emotional intelligence and a willingness to do whatever’s required.

Because we know it takes more than funding for a startup to survive and thrive; the right support goes beyond writing cheques

Approach

We’re an ecosystem player here for the long-term

It’s a step towards the tomorrow we all want to live in

Content

We’re committed to readdressing the gender imbalance in venture, by breaking down barriers and opening doors

Collaboration is Queen: Our female founder network has collectively raised £600m

FFOH

The Playfair Angel Community is a core part of our ongoing commitment to angels across Europe

Our growing angel community is open to active angel investors in Europe

Angels

We believe that access to VC should be open and based on merit, we review each and every application

It’s never too early for an initial conversation

Pitch us

FFOH

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 the largest diversity and inclusion initiative in venture.

Started by the Playfair Capital team in 2019, FFOH has already brought together over 1,900 founders for 7,800 one-to-one mentoring and pitch meetings with over 180 investors across nine editions to date. Founders participating in the event have raised over £1.2bn.

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 twice 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.

Edition 11 of Female Founder Office Hours will take place in Spring 2024.

Founders must meet the following criteria to apply

  1. Inception to Series A

  2. Tech company

  3. Europe HQ

  4. Women-led

To be added to the mailing list for this event, please fill out this 1 minute form.

Register Now

On Thursday 9th November, 2023, Playfair and 170 of the world’s leading venture capital funds, including Atomico, Creandum, Headline, MMC, Northzone, Octopus, Partech, Plug & Play, SpeedInvest, and TriplePoint held remote office hours for 293 female founders from across Europe. A total of 1164 meetings took place.

You can register your interest for the Spring 24' Edition here and we will be touch closer to the time.

November Office Hours '23

On Thursday 20th April, Playfair Capital hosted the 9th edition of Female Founder Office Hours including Amadeus, Atomico, Balderton, Cherry, Creandum, Notion, LocalGlobe, Partech, Point9, Octopus, and Seedcamp.

This edition saw 292 founders, 175 investors & 1,168 one-on-one mentoring/pitching sessions.

On Thursday 10th November, Playfair Capital, Tech Nation, Google for Startups and Global Ventures hosted the 8th edition of Female Founder Office Hours including Atomico, Balderton, Creandum, Dawn, EQT, Notion, and Sequoia.

This edition saw 366 founders, 185 investors & 1,464 one-on-one mentoring/pitching sessions.

On Tuesday 26th April, Playfair Capital, Tech Nation and Google for Startups hosted the 7th edition of Female Founder Office Hours. In previous editions, over 100 of the world’s leading venture capital funds have joined the initiative including Atomico, Balderton, Creandum, Dawn, EQT, Notion, and Sequoia.

On Wednesday 24th November, Playfair Capital will be hosting the 6th edition of Female Founder Office Hours. In previous editions, over 100 of the world’s leading venture capital funds have joined the initiative including Atomico, Balderton, Creandum, Dawn, EQT, Notion, and Sequoia. This 6th edition will be our largest office hours initiative to date for women founders.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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