You've worked hard to earn it. We're building a community for what comes next.
XX Invest is a community for UK women who want to back female-founded businesses. We find the founders, do the groundwork, and bring you what we learn. You decide, deal by deal, whether any of them are for you, and any investment you make happens directly with the founder, on your own terms.
Membership is separate from any investment you choose to make. XX Invest does not arrange, facilitate or recommend investments. Nothing is pooled, and nothing is invested on your behalf.
Angel investing means backing early-stage businesses directly, in exchange for a stake in the company.
It was designed for people with time, networks and someone to ask. Most of us have none of the three.
Deals move through private networks. If you're not in the room when a round is coming together, you never hear about it — and the rooms have historically not been full of women.
The work behind a single decision is substantial: sourcing, screening, reading a data room, understanding terms. Most professional women don't have a spare evening a week for it, and outsourcing it means giving up control.
So capable women with capital to deploy end up either doing nothing, or writing cheques based on who they happen to know. Neither is a strategy. Here's what should happen instead.
A smaller number of better-prepared introductions.
We look for female-founded UK companies raising their first investment and do the groundwork on the ones worth your time. What reaches you is a short, honest brief: the business, the commercial case, the terms the company has set, and the reasons it might not work.
We're not advising you to invest, and we're not part of the transaction if you do. Every decision, and every deal, happens directly between you and the founder. Membership gives you access, context and company. You'll watch some of these businesses actually grow, meet the women building them, and work out what you think of each one alongside people asking the same questions you are.
Membership first. Investing, if and when you choose.
01
Join as a member
Annual or monthly membership, plus a short self-certification step, a legally required form confirming you're eligible to be shown this kind of investment. It protects you, it's not us being bureaucratic.
02
Learn the ground rules
Sessions and briefings on early-stage investing: terms, dilution, risk, tax reliefs and portfolio thinking.
03
Meet the founders we choose to host.
A handful a year, each with a written case, their round terms and the key risks.
04
Decide, deal by deal.
If you're interested, you take it forward directly with the founder. XX Invest isn't part of that transaction.
A structurally underfunded market is an opportunity, not a cause.
Female-founded companies in the UK receive less than 2% of venture capital. That figure has barely moved in a decade, even though female-founded businesses consistently outperform.
Part of the reason: 86% of UK angel investors are still men. Women are a small minority of the people deciding where early-stage capital goes.
The number of women angels has grown 60% in three years. Their share of the market has barely moved.
Persistent underfunding means good companies raise at more reasonable valuations, run leaner, and stay capital-efficient for longer. We think that's where the mispricing is. The mission matters to us; the numbers are why we're building this.
What you get for £2,000 a year.
Prefer to spread it? £200 a month works just as well, over the same 12-month membership.
Founders, chosen with care.
Access to the founders we choose to host, and the reasoning behind why.
Founder access
Live sessions with founders raising, where you can ask the questions you would want answered before writing a cheque.
Founder stories, on your time.
As we start backing founders, you'll get profiles and updates on their progress, so you're never dependent on being in the room to follow along.
An education programme
Structured teaching on early-stage investing — terms, valuation, dilution, tax reliefs, and how to build a portfolio rather than make one bet.
A room of peers
Quarterly dinners and regular drinks meetups with women asking the same questions you are, at roughly the same stage of the same journey. Good company, not just good networking.
Direct access, nothing in between.
When you decide to invest, you deal with the founder directly. XX Invest doesn't arrange, facilitate or take a role in the transaction.
Built by people who've been in the room.
Julia Elliott Brown
Serial entrepreneur, board chair and strategic advisor to female founders navigating growth, funding and governance. Julia has spent over a decade working at the intersection of entrepreneurship and investment — and has seen firsthand, repeatedly, how the system quietly excludes capable women with capital to deploy.
Sam Cooper-Gray
Former Global Head of SME Strategy at HSBC, where she led a $1bn Female Entrepreneur Debt Fund. Now Chair of The Gender Index and lead of the Conditions to Scale workstream for the UK Government's Invest in Women Taskforce. Sam has spent 25 years making the economic case for backing women — and building the infrastructure to do it.
Together, they're building the community they wish had existed sooner.
The things people ask first.
Is my membership fee invested?
No. The membership fee pays for access, curation and education. It's never invested in any company, and nothing is pooled.
Do I have to invest?
No. Many members spend their first year learning and meeting founders without investing at all.
How much would I need to invest if I did?
Minimum cheque sizes are set by the company raising, not by us, and are published with each founder profile. As a guide, expect somewhere between £2,000 and £10,000, though it varies deal by deal.
Who decides which founders appear?
We do. We choose who to feature based on credibility and reputation, the same way any host chooses who takes the stage. That's not due diligence carried out on your behalf, and it's not a recommendation to invest, it's our judgement on who's worth your time. The decision, and the diligence, are yours to make.
More detail on How it works and Membership.