Women in Entrepreneurship
Women entrepreneurs discuss scaling businesses across sectors and stages.
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The Entrepreneur UK Women in Entrepreneurship evening at Mr Porter, inside the Hilton last night, resisted the urge to present itself as a moment. It was, instead, a room full of people already in the middle of things.
A full room, and a guest list that reads as a cross-section of a particular kind of working life: founders building companies at different speeds, across different sectors, and with varying levels of visibility. Some are well into the journey, others closer to the start, all navigating the same broad set of pressures. Alongside them are businesswomen from across sectors and stages, each shaping their own path through growth, uncertainty and scale.
Karolina Pelc, Marine Tanguy and Lara Acosta were the evening’s reference points, but not its centre of gravity. Pelc, whose recently published book, Her Play: Making Your Own Luck, draws on her experience across start-ups and venture capital, spoke with the kind of clarity that comes from having moved through both worlds. Tanguy, long established within the arts and cultural sector internationally, brought a perspective shaped as much by institution-building as by entrepreneurship. Acosta, who has built a significant presence on LinkedIn alongside her ventures, reflected a newer model – where audience, influence and commercial strategy increasingly overlap. Their contributions – on capital, scale and the realities of building in public – shaped the conversation throughout the room
What stood out more was the texture of the conversations around them: funding routes compared in passing, hiring challenges dissected, ideas tested against experience. There was little appetite for abstraction. Even the more forward-looking discussions stayed close to practice – what works, what doesn’t, what might, with some adjustment. All with women at the centre.
There is a tendency to treat gatherings like this as symbolic. This one was different. Female entrepreneurs focused on the practical realities of building and scaling across sectors and stages. A longer feature, with images from the night and advice for entrepreneurs, will follow.
The Entrepreneur UK Women in Entrepreneurship evening at Mr Porter, inside the Hilton last night, resisted the urge to present itself as a moment. It was, instead, a room full of people already in the middle of things.
A full room, and a guest list that reads as a cross-section of a particular kind of working life: founders building companies at different speeds, across different sectors, and with varying levels of visibility. Some are well into the journey, others closer to the start, all navigating the same broad set of pressures. Alongside them are businesswomen from across sectors and stages, each shaping their own path through growth, uncertainty and scale.
Karolina Pelc, Marine Tanguy and Lara Acosta were the evening’s reference points, but not its centre of gravity. Pelc, whose recently published book, Her Play: Making Your Own Luck, draws on her experience across start-ups and venture capital, spoke with the kind of clarity that comes from having moved through both worlds. Tanguy, long established within the arts and cultural sector internationally, brought a perspective shaped as much by institution-building as by entrepreneurship. Acosta, who has built a significant presence on LinkedIn alongside her ventures, reflected a newer model – where audience, influence and commercial strategy increasingly overlap. Their contributions – on capital, scale and the realities of building in public – shaped the conversation throughout the room
