How we support female founders

Lifted Ventures is breaking down barriers to early-stage investment by supporting diverse female founders.

We believe investment should be accessible to everyone, regardless of background, location, ethnicity, gender, or neuro and physical diversity, and we are committed to creating inclusive pathways into funding.

We help female founders at start up and scale up stage through education programmes and acccess to capital, whether this be through our own network of angel investors or by partnering with private investors and VCs.

Female founders looking for investment

If you’re an early-stage startup seeking funding, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re sector-agnostic and focus on supporting female-founded businesses based outside London and the South East.

If your business is a good fit, we’ll invite you to pitch at one of our monthly events, where you’ll present to our network of angel investors.

Ready to take the next step?

Apply via the link below.

Athena Labs:

Education programmes for female start-ups, looking to get investment-ready

At Lifted Ventures, we help female founders secure funding with expert-led programmes designed for investment success.

Our education programmes cover:

Investor-Ready Strategy – Build a solid financial and business model.
Pitch Coaching – Perfect your pitch with hands-on investor feedback.
Network & Mentorship – Connect with top investors and founders.
Insider Insights – Learn what investors look for and how to stand out.

To partner with us and commission a programme, email [email protected]

Athena Scale:

For female founders who are ready to scale

We help women founders move beyond early growth and into successful scale with expert-led, investor-informed support.

Scale-Ready Strategy – Build a clear, tailored growth plan designed for high growth and complex scale-up decisions.
Capital Strategy – Go beyond funding access with smarter, de-biased approaches to securing and structuring investment.
Networks & Visibility – Strengthen credibility, expand influence, and connect with aligned investors, founders, and ecosystem leaders.
Leadership & Founder Growth – Develop how you show up as a leader, with support to navigate pressure, prioritise effectively, and think long-term.

To commission a programme, email us at [email protected]

Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership Programme

We’re proud to be an investor partner for Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership Programme, a groundbreaking initiative designed to provide essential funding to high-growth, innovative UK companies.

This programme supports micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are pioneering cutting-edge technologies in key sectors, including:

Net Zero
Healthy Living and Agriculture
Digital and Technologies
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

By partnering with Innovate UK, Lifted Ventures will play a vital role in fueling the success of ambitious UK businesses, helping them access the investment they need to scale and make a lasting impact.

The Lifted Female Founder Community

Are you a female founder looking to increase your investment literacy and confidence?

Whether:

You’re not ready for investment yet but want to understand more
You’ve already landed investment but want to share your experience and prepare for the next round
Or you’re looking to connect with other regional female founders

Join our FREE Lifted Female Founder (LFF) Community

What does the community get access to?

Advance notice of exclusive events and intimate roundtables with priority tickets

Monthly newsletter with tips and knowledge sharing on how to secure investment

Learn from fellow female founders who’ve experienced the investment journey

Opportunity to meet investors in a supportive and encouraging environment

Guaranteed places on free fundraising workshops and programmes

Exclusive access to Friday monthly AMA sessions with the Lifted Ventures co-founders

"Jordan is really well ingrained in the UK start-up, fundraising and investment scene, enabling her to provide efficient, effective and friendly advice. Through Jordan's support, we were able to find at least four new relevant angel investors and were successful in raising further Innovate UK grant funding to expand our research."

Female Entrepreneur

Lifted Alumni Founders Circle

When you complete one of our founder programmes or join a pitch event, you’ll gain access to our Alumni Founders Circle WhatsApp community – a private space designed to support you long after the programme ends, bringing together ambitious female founders on a shared journey.

Beyond funding, the community helps you make valuable connections, discover collaborations, and access tools to support your business growth.

Female founder FAQs

What are the selection criteria for accessing Lifted Ventures support?

You should have a unique product or service which has strong market growth potential, has been tested in the market with a solid team to support the organisations ambitions. All of this will need distilling into a pitch deck for your application – don’t worry if it isn’t a fully polished version we just need to see what progress you’ve made so far, and your future plans.

Lifted Ventures has an investment thesis based on backing Regional female founders, so if you are based in London we are unable to help.

What happens once I have been asked to attend a First Selection online meeting?

This is an informal 30 minute online meeting when you’ll be asked to go through your pitch deck and discuss the high level details of your investment ask. At the end of this meeting you’ll be asked to either take some time to work on further progress or clarification or to attend a second longer meeting.

What happens once I have been asked to attend a Second Selection online meeting?

At this meeting both the Co Founders of Lifted Ventures will ask you to go through your pitch deck in more detail during a 60 minute conversation. At the end of this you will either be asked to take some time to work on further progress or to participate in a Lifted Ventures pitch event.

After I've been selected for a pitch event what happens next?

You’ll be asked to set up an online meeting with Gordons LLP, the legal partner to Lifted Ventures to go through some light touch due diligence questions about your business.

You’ll also be asked to complete a document declaring which investor conversations you’ve already started to provide absolute clarity from the start. This is necessary because Lifted Ventures charge a success 5% fee on all investments which are made through their connections. This goes a small way towards covering the costs of running Lifted Ventures. All advice and support on the journey to landing investment is completely free to access.

Next, you will need to make any further refinements to your pitch deck to make it as attractive to the Lifted Ventures investment audience as possible.

Please note, we know that everyone offers different advice at this point however we know what works for the angels and co-investors in our network!

Lastly, we’ll ask you to attend an online run through prior to the pitch event.

I've been selected for a pitch event, what should I expect?

Lifted Ventures hosts monthly, online pitch events for their angels and co-investors. These are usually held once a month, online on the third Tuesday of the month from 10am-11.30am.

Usually there will be just two or three founders pitching and we ask founders to be available for the full event right up until the last 20-30 minutes where we have a closed session for investors at the end.

You will have five minutes to pitch and ten minutes of investor questions after this.

What happens after the pitch event?

During the pitch event we will ascertain the level of interest from the investors in attending a follow up Due Dilligence meeting. We will encourage everyone to organise this in the two weeks after the pitch event.

At this DD session you will need to be prepared for more detailed questions. Ideally you will have already set up a data room (online folder) with as many, helpful supportive documents for the investors to review as possible.

How long does the investment process take?

Our record is three weeks – however the average is more likely to be three to six months, perhaps longer.

Do Lifted Angels appear as one group on the cap table (list of share holders) or as individuals?

We believe it’s important for women to appear as individuals on the cap table and our co-investors (VCs) fully understand and support the way we work.

Do female founders need to have been part of a Lifted accelerator to get funding?

We do not require founders to have attended one of our accelerators to apply for funding.