Hatch provides support for female founders to launch and grow successful, sustainable ventures that have a positive impact on their lives and their communities. Women and those from marginalised genders face additional challenges in entrepreneurship including struggles with imposter syndrome, a lack of role models with shared experiences, and discrimination when applying for funding.
The majority of founders we support are women, and we tailor a lot of our programme and community content to reflect this, exploring the shared experience of those in our cohorts, discussing techniques to tackle imposter syndrome and sharing insights on running a business alongside caring responsibilities.
Join a supportive community of entrepreneurs and experts to get the support you need to launch, grow and scale your business. Since 2014 we’ve supported more than 9,000 founders to thrive, and last year eight in ten people on our cohort programmes were female or from another marginalised gender.
The power of a community that gets you
Agnese Cigliano joined a Hatch Launchpad programme to start her social impact business, Aasté Rugs. Her venture ensures that people with a passion for interior design are able to purchase high quality rugs that invest back into the artisan communities that produce them with traceable fair wages for the work they realise, rather than contributing to capitalistic systems that oppress workers.
“Hatch was actually incredibly crucial in empowering me and giving me all the tools that I needed to incorporate the business, it was an incredible experience.”
“One of the things that was very interesting and inspiring for me was being in the course that was for female founders, there were a lot of women with similar problems.”
Our support for female founders enables them to feel more confident accessing funding, measuring impact, and communicating this to their audience.
Confidence in yourself
Our research found that more than a quarter of people in the UK believe that men have a better chance of success in entrepreneurship than women, and twice as many men as women had at least ten entrepreneurs in their network. This underestimation and underrepresentation can have a damaging impact on women’s confidence when starting a venture.
Emma Bracegirdle joined a Hatch Accelerator to take her ethical filmmaking business, The Saltways, to the next level.
“I can’t explain how much it changed everything. It was just a real game changer, it just made me have the confidence in my business. It took it from where everything is in my brain and trying to figure things out to actually actionable steps that I could take to get it from here to where I want it to be.”
"I’m very much still on that journey. But I feel like now I have the skills, the resource and the support of the community to actually get there."
Recent programme graduates
Support for women in business is crucial
Only one in three UK entrepreneurs is female. This represents a gender gap equivalent to around 1.1 million missing businesses and up to £250 billion that could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men. Looking across the entrepreneurial journey, UK women are less likely than men to go from intention to starting a business and half as likely to scale their businesses.
At Hatch we are determined to level the playing field through our support for female founders, building a fairer startup system where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We provide training, mentorship, grant funding, and more to give female entrepreneurs the best chance of success, and have built a thriving community of successful female founders over the past decade.
Visit our support page to see what we can do for you and your business, and take the leap to invest in your founder journey.
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