We’re delighted to share that Lifted is launching a new purpose-built scale-up accelerator Athena Scale, designed specifically for women business leaders and female founders who are ready to go beyond early-stage growth.
Recent insights show a notable rise in UK female-led scale-ups: the number of female-founded “superscalers” businesses with £50m+ turnover grew by 41% in the last year, and around 60% of those now report turnover above £75m, demonstrating the real potential of women-led companies when they achieve scale. However, despite increasing numbers and impact, women still face systemic barriers in accessing finance, networks and growth opportunities from lagging regional support to persistent investment gaps underscoring the need for targeted support to unlock their full economic and leadership potential.
That need is particularly acute outside traditional hubs like London, where easier access to capital, connections and knowledge sharing drives a disproportionate share of high-growth activity. Only around 18% of high-growth enterprises include a woman founder, and regions with fewer tailored resources risk missing out on significant entrepreneurial talent and economic contribution.
It’s why targeted regional support matters, ring-fencing investment for women-led growth initiatives, expanding access to growth capital and building local support networks are all recognised as vital to closing these gaps and ensuring women founders can scale everywhere, not just in a few concentrated ecosystems.
That’s where Athena Scale comes in, an intensive structured programme tailored for companies that are beyond early-stage validation, with strong product-market fit, proven traction and revenue, now focused on significant growth, international expansion and securing meaningful investment.
Unlike our existing highly acclaimed regional Athena Labs Growth and Funding programmes, this scale-up accelerator dives deep into strategic growth areas alongside bespoke mentoring and peer-to-peer support tailored to each company’s specific challenges.
This new scale accelerator combines expert-led workshops, female leader site visits, one-to-one coaching, curated investor introductions and cohort-based learning over a sustained period so that founders can both think bigger and execute with clarity as they scale, whether that’s entering new global markets, preparing for a Series A+ raise, strengthening executive teams, or embedding repeatable growth systems across the business.
Athena Scale offers a structured journey that supports women business leaders to accelerate beyond early-stage progress and truly scale with strategic insight, capital connections and leadership-level tools that position you to compete and lead on the global stage.
Jordan and Helen
Co-Founders Lifted Ventures