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Women currently own 36% of startup businesses; whilst that’s a staggering 30% increase from 2007, it still poses the question as to why the start-up industry is such a male-dominated space? Why isn’t this issue addressed more? We spoke to two female founders to get their take on how being a mum has shaped their start-up journey.

“People ask me why I don’t focus on being a mum”

Frankie Fox, co-founder of Foraging Fox

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When speaking to Frankie Fox, co-founder of Foraging Fox startup, she said that one of the biggest challenges she faced was the question ‘don’t you want to be focused on being a mum?’. Despite her role as an international tax adviser at PWC, her degree in Law, and her decision to leave the City to spend time with her children, her ability to co-exist as both a mum and a business woman was challenged and interrogated repeatedly.

“It’s really important to me that my children, especially my daughter, knows that you don’t have to give up being a mum to be a business woman or vice versa; you can absolutely be both and excel at both. It’s not a binary decision. You can be a dad and a businessman — it’s not mutually exclusive. So why can’t I be a mum and a businesswoman?”

“As a woman, the difficulty when getting funding from investors for your startup is well documented, but at the end of the day, if someone doubts my focus, then I don’t want or need that support for them.”

“I don’t want investment from people who question my focus”

Alexi von Eldik, founder of CRU8

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The timeline of Alexi’s business was both brilliant and challenging to her role as a mother; her products began to appear on WholeFoods shelves just five months after she gave birth to her son.

“I effectively have two babies — my startup and my son, and I’ve created and poured love into both of them from day one. Of course, there’s been a lot of feelings of guilt, especially when I started working soon after my son was born, but I think as a mother, guilt is inevitable. I actually think being a working mum, now my son is older, has helped us have a much closer relationship, as I have to be completely honest. He knows that if I say I’ll be somewhere, I will be there, and so me working or going to a meeting are totally fine with him. I make sure that I dedicate time to him, 1–1, and do all sorts of exciting things with him, and then I also make time, maybe when he’s gone to bed, to run my business.”

“I have a blurred identity; I’m a mum, I’m a business woman, I’m me. None of those things are separate, and none of them could exist without the other.”

Speaking to these two women, it was clear that one of the key principles to being a successful start-up was community. Forward Fooding’s community of start-ups is one which we aim to showcase and foster, providing entrepreneurs with stories such as Frankie’s and Alexi’s so they can see that against the statistics, more and more women are pushing against patriarchy in the system. If you’d like to join that community, and see what connections Forward Fooding could offer your start-up, feel free to get in touch with us at info@forwardfooding.com! You can also add your company to our FMCG trends section on our platform to get free visibility within our corporate and investors’ network here.

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This article has been written by Mathilde Redshaw