We play fair by founders
Giving you an unfair advantage, to take you from where you are to where you want to be
Giving you an unfair advantage, to take you from where you are to where you want to be
92% of our portfolio recommend working with us
About
73% of our companies have successfully raised a Series A
Portfolio
Because we know it takes more than funding for a startup to survive and thrive; the right support goes beyond writing cheques
Approach
It’s a step towards the tomorrow we all want to live in
Content
Collaboration is Queen: Our female founder network has collectively raised £600m
Community
It’s never too early for an initial conversation
Pitch us
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 1673 founders for 6,694 one-to-one mentoring and pitch meetings with over 180 investors across eight editions to date. Founders participating in the event have raised over £600m.
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.
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.
To register your interest for the upcoming event in Spring 2023, please complete this 2 minute form.
Register interestOn Thursday 20th April, Playfair Capital will host the 9th edition of Female Founder Office Hours. In previous editions, over 160 of the world’s leading venture capital funds have joined the initiative including Atomico, Balderton, Creandum, Dawn, EQT, Notion, and Sequoia. This 9th edition will be our largest office hours initiative to date for women founders.
If you'd like to take part in edition 9 in Spring 2023, please apply here
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.
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.
