In the early days of your startup, make sure you work towards and measure some milestones, however small. Ensure everyone in your growing team shares and knows this week or this month’s goals and when you hit a target or achieve a milestone, take a short break to recognise and mark your collective achievement

“Pitching is a dark art.  But it’s one that as an entrepreneur or a founder you need to get right”.

To round off our raising seed finance July webinar, Mary McKenna led a Q+A session with Larissa, Gillian and Karina. See HERE for first two video links.

Watch part 2 of this brilliant #FemaleFounders event with Larissa Feeney of Accountants Online talking to Gillian Doyle of Cerebreon and Karina Kelly of Content Llama.

In the run-up to our event on 15th September with Kelly Hoey (on the theme of networking of course) we’re featuring some of our AwakenHub members telling their own networking stories, starting with Maria Gallo.

As any founder knows, negotiation skills is a key ingredient to raising a successful round. Recently, I was interviewed by Nathalie Gregg to share negotiation tips to catapult your influence and close the deal.

Read on to discover my top 7 negotiation strategies.

Back in June 2017 Elemental closed a £300k seed round in just 43 days from first pitch to money in the bank and at the time, the three of us were inundated with the same question – How on earth did you do that? We still get asked the same question today.

I asked Anne about her campaign to fund 1 million women by 2030, a $5 Trillion opportunity, and how important it is to work together to bridge this enormous funding gap. According to Forbes, at the current rate of investment, it will take women-led businesses, 257 years to reach parity. A pretty sobering statistic.

… really do your homework on potential investors (what sectors they are actively investing in, what else they’ve invested in, what they’re interested in this year, if they’re even investing at the moment) and don’t approach anyone without doing this first.  Also as part of this, speak to the founders of other companies in the investor’s portfolio and ask them how the experience has been for them.  Sounds obvious but so many founders don’t bother to do this. 

After a long time talking about setting up a dedicated platform for women led founders and co-founders across the island of Ireland we are delighted to finally have our first AwakenHub online event scheduled for July 6th 2020.