# BWSMAGAZINE
BWS Questions with ….
Jackie Waring
INVESTING WOMEN Jackie Waring – CEO of all-female business angel group
What was your own career background? In 1990 at the age of 25 I was appointed CEO of regional economic development agency, Gordon Enterprise Trust where I was privileged to work alongside a board of inspirational entrepreneurs who greatly influenced my own future thinking. I went on to run three companies, ranging from a 50-employee business to my own enterprise policy consultancy founded in 2003. I later became the UK’ s first Advisory Board Member to the Global Banking Alliance for Women, based in Washington DC.
What inspired you to launch Investing Women? I was driven by both passion and frustration to help overcome some of the barriers preventing female entrepreneurs from achieving their full potential. Access to finance for female-led companies was a key area of focus through my work for the UK Government; where I led on this issue. Through my business activity in the US, I became aware of the‘ echo effect,’ where a rise in female angel investors has been proven to be closely mirrored by an increase in women-led companies gaining investment. I wanted to replicate that phenomenon in Scotland.
What has Investing Women done? We established a dynamic network of experienced businesswomen who are keen to help other female entrepreneurs achieve growth and financial investment. We then created our AccelerateHER Awards and annual Ambition and Growth Conference to provide a platform for aspiring businesswomen. This approach is working: this year we doubled the number of awards entries to almost 190. In the first two years of the awards, finalists have raised over £ 3.75m in investment between them. Investing Women has invested in 10 companies to date, 80 per cent of which have female founders in their growing teams. The overall investment leveraged exceeds £ 10m as we frequently invest alongside other investment syndicates. TC Biopharm, Scottish Biotechnology and Sofant Technologies are among those exciting companies we’ ve supported.
Is it right to focus solely on women entrepreneurs? The phenomenal opportunity for economic growth represented by women entrepreneurs is still far from being fully realised. Achieving gender equality will be a wonderful outcome from releasing this potential; and it is the wider economy that will benefit. Increasing the number of femaleled start-up businesses to the same level of those run by men would deliver a five per cent boost to our economy, equivalent to over £ 7.6bn. And that’ s before these companies start to grow and scale!.
Does Scotland provide a good environment for female entrepreneurs? There are many positives. Scotland is rich in innovation and we lead the world in areas such as life sciences and technology- including Fintech, which offers great economic potential. We have an entrepreneurial ecosystem the envy of many other countries and both this ecosystem and the Scottish Government are increasingly proactive in supporting female entrepreneurs. Partners in the ScotCanDo backed Framework for Women’ s Enterprise and emerging programmes like Unlocking Ambition are achieving real impact here. Thanks to the great support of LINC Scotland; Scotland has a strong, collaborative business angel community. This is of growing importance to Scottish companies given 2017 saw business angels invest and leverage £ 54m to boost Scotland’ s most innovative businesses
What would define success for Investing Women? For us, success is seeing equal levels of female and male business angel investors in the future. This will mean a near doubling of current levels of investment into Scottish companies and, applying the‘ echo effect,’ will help significantly more women grow their companies across international markets.
4