What the Data Finally Says Out Loud
One in seven female founders say loneliness is their biggest challenge. Only 2% of venture capital reaches fully female-founded businesses. Shannon on what the data finally says out loud and why none of it is surprising.
On the morning of Friday 27th February, an email landed in my inbox with the subject line: The Rise Report is here.
It opened with three words: YOU DID THIS.
A few months earlier, I had filled in a survey run by Female Founders Rise. Eleven open-ended questions about why I started my business, what I find hardest, what success looks like to me, what I actually need. I answered honestly, the way you do when someone finally asks the right questions. Then I got on with things, the way you do when life keeps moving.
The email was telling me that my answers, alongside those of 2,224 other female founders across the UK, had become The Rise Report of Female Entrepreneurship 2026. One of the largest grassroots studies of female entrepreneurship ever conducted in this country. 2,225 founders, collectively turning over £1 billion, employing over 9,000 people, generating 436,000 words of lived experience.
I downloaded it and read it in one sitting. Not because the findings were surprising. Because they weren’t.
The loneliness nobody talks about
One in seven female founders said loneliness and isolation was their biggest challenge. The report notes this could be extrapolated to cover 230,000 female-founded businesses across the UK. Founders of larger businesses reported similar levels to those just starting out.
I am one of those founders.
At various points building both my website consultancy and High Flying Design, loneliness has been the hardest part. Not the strategy, not the revenue, not the uncertainty. The quiet. There were moments when I genuinely considered going back to a nine-to-five, not because the business wasn’t working, but because I missed human interaction. The kind that just happens naturally when you share a space with other people.
What I eventually realised was that the answer was not a job. It was community. Being a regular somewhere. Hobbies. Group workouts. Regularly booked coffee catch-ups or walk and talks with friends. Freelancing networks. Business owner groups. Places where you are around people who understand what it costs to build something, even if they are building something entirely different.
Over a quarter of founders in the survey reported mental health pressures, including burnout and self-doubt, alongside their loneliness. Not surprising to anyone who has built something alone. But worth saying out loud, because it so rarely is.
Financial stability, first
The report created what it calls the Four Ss of success, drawn directly from asking founders what long-term success means to them. Financial stability and profitability came first at 53%. Scale and exit second at 38%. Social impact third at 28%. Work-life balance and personal wellbeing last at 21%.
Over half of female founders said their primary definition of success was financial stability and consistent revenue. Being able to pay themselves properly for the work they are doing.
There is a widely held assumption that female founders are primarily motivated by purpose rather than profit. The data does not support this. Female founders are commercially focused and growth-oriented. Social impact matters deeply to many but it sits alongside financial goals, not instead of them.
In England, talking about money is still awkward. What you earn, what you charge, what you are genuinely struggling with. The stigma means many founders are navigating pricing and profitability in silence, without the honest conversations that would actually help them move forward.
Financial instability does not just affect business outcomes. It affects decision-making. When you are worried about how you will cover rent, or whether your income will hold month to month, it becomes significantly harder to take the kinds of risks that building a business often requires. Much of the advice given to founders still assumes a level of financial safety net that not everyone has. That assumption is worth examining.
The funding gap is not a confidence problem
Only 2% of venture capital in 2024 went to fully female-founded businesses. Over 80% went to all-male teams. Black female founders received just 0.02% of VC funding in the decade between 2009 and 2019.
45% of founders cited funding as their primary barrier. 73% of those who had tried to raise private finance described the experience as demanding, uneven and emotionally draining. One in ten reported ghosting, dismissive attitudes and in some cases overt sexism.
The financial barriers do not stop at investment either: UK founders currently spend roughly three times more of their income on childcare than founders in Canada, and the UK loses an estimated £38 billion in economic value annually as a result. Women are not just being underfunded. They are being asked to build businesses while carrying a financial burden that most of their male peers simply do not face in the same way.
If women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, it could add an estimated £310 billion to the UK economy. This is not a niche conversation. It is a national economic failure happening in plain sight.
The advice given to female founders in response to all of this is so often personal. Be more confident. Learn to pitch better. Network more strategically. But confidence did not create a system where 2% of venture capital reaches female-founded teams. And confidence alone will not change it.
What female founders actually need to thrive
39% of founders cited peer and founder networks as their most valuable form of support. 32% cited mentorship and coaching. The evidence throughout the report is consistent: access to the right people at the right moment changes outcomes. Not generic advice. Not confidence workshops. Real relationships with people who have already been where you are.
Emmie Faust, who founded Female Founders Rise and commissioned this report, wrote in her foreword: when founders share knowledge, open doors and pay it forward, progress accelerates. The data proves it.
Every founder story I have published on this site carries a version of the same finding. Hannah Capocci-Hunt's biggest stockist found her at a market stall and asked if she made lavender soap. That conversation became one of the most significant commercial relationships in her business, something no marketing strategy could have manufactured. At the Ambitious Women in Essex meetup I wrote about last year, one founder shared one of her non-negotiables: keeping an archive of every piece of positive feedback she receives, so that on the days when building feels hard and lonely, she has something real to return to. You only hear things like that when you are in a room with people who are genuinely in it too.
The report also cites research showing that eight out of ten young people cannot name a single female entrepreneur. I grew up in Clacton-on-Sea and rarely saw women who had built something of their own or followed a creative path. When you cannot see it, it is almost impossible to believe it is available to you. This is one of the reasons the founder stories on this site matter to me beyond content. They are evidence. Here is what is possible. Here is someone who did it. Here is what it actually looked like from the inside.
One founder in the report captured female entrepreneurship better than any statistic could: “There are massive ups and downs, but seeing your idea come to life and being able to live out what you want to see in the world is amazing.”
This is why we keep going.
What I want you to do with this
Read the report. Not because it will tell you anything you do not already know. But because there is something powerful about seeing your experience reflected in data. About knowing that the thing you carry quietly is not unique to you. That it is shared across 2,225 women, across every sector and stage and corner of this country, all building something real, all navigating the same silence.
If you took the survey, your voice is in there. So is mine.
The Rise Report of Female Entrepreneurship 2026 was commissioned by Female Founders Rise, conducted by Nottingham Business School in collaboration with WholeSum, and supported by Barclays.