Helping female entrepreneurs progress their business

As part of The Open University’s (OU) aims to support aspiring entrepreneurs, our Open Business Creators Fund reopened last year, prompting over 500 aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs to sign up for the initiative, which included expert-led webinars to help founders in their journey. An impressive 300 of them went on to submit their business plans to pitch for funding.

Sponsored by NatWest, this round of the OU’s funding competition helps underrepresented groups access business support, training and funding, enabling them to take their ideas forward to the next stage.

Last time the Fund was for people with disabilities, this time it was for women in business. Women-led businesses receive far less investment than male-led businesses.

Robert Wilson
Manager of Student Opportunities at the OU and Lead on the Open Business Creators programme

A strategic priority for NatWest

In 2019, NatWest published the Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which highlighted the significant rise in the number of women starting businesses. The review also found that if women were able to start and scale businesses at the same rate as men, it could add £250 billion of new value to the UK economy.

That’s why NatWest Accelerator, a thriving business community providing support for founders and leaders, decided to invest £50,000 in Open Business Creators which was the “perfect match” for the Bank’s new university partnership manifesto. “We want to help women start their entrepreneurial journey, giving them access to support that they typically need,” says Cheryl Gourlay, Strategic Partnership Manager at NatWest. “We are keen to remove those barriers that underrepresented groups often face.”

NatWest Accelerator is about empowering entrepreneurs to start, scale and thrive, and we've made a huge commitment this year to grow our community to 50,000. We want to build a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem and are proud that 50% of our members are women and 20% are ethnically diverse founders.

Cheryl Gourlay
Strategic Partnership Manager at NatWest

Grant recipient: Little Paws for Coffee

Of the 300 women-led businesses who submitted their plans, 20 were selected to receive up to £2,500 each to invest in their business. One of them was Jade Miller, co-founder of Little Paws for Coffee, a community-focused coffee business aimed at gym-goers that channels its profits into rescue animal care. Jade and her business partner, Lisa, are self-employed consultants who have worked in the private security industry for the past 26 years.

The idea for the business came about when Jade was working out at her local gym in Newry in Northern Ireland and realised that something was missing – a communal space with refreshment facilities where people could hang out when they had finished exercising. “People were finishing at the gym and leaving, so we were losing the community vibe.”

Jade and Lisa saw a business opportunity, one that would enable them to combine their passions around communities, mental health, fitness and animal rescue. They invested all their savings in a second-hand trailer, coffee machine and grinder and opened for business. Little Paws for Coffee has been really popular and Jade and Lisa plan to extend its reach – they want to offer mobility sessions, coffee mornings and personal safety lessons for teenagers and women, for example. But they also had a problem they needed to overcome – their coffee grinder. It was too slow, affecting Jade and Lisa’s ability to engage customers in conversation and serve them quickly enough.

Since receiving the cash injection from the Open Business Creators Fund, Jade and Lisa have invested in a new coffee grinder, enabling them to serve customers more quickly, chat more and reduce wastage. “The new grinder has been a gamechanger. It’s been fantastic,” says Jade.

Grant recipient: Dabalox

Caroline Bowen, CEO of Dabalox, is another female entrepreneur who impressed the Open Business Creators Fund and secured funding. Dabalox is an AI platform that helps heat pump installers and energy advice organisations communicate more effectively and clearly with homeowners and capture their visit notes on the go.

The UK Government wants more than 450,000 heat pumps installed in new and existing buildings every year by 2030, but those targets are not being met currently. It requires a massive infrastructure change but that is only part of the challenge, according to Caroline. She says there is much confusion and fear among homeowners about heat pumps. That’s where Dabalox comes in. It captures all the verbal communication between installers and homeowners and turns them into templated reports for future reference. “So when people have questions, they get answers in a very personalised and accurate way,” says Caroline. “The conversations are all there for the installer and the homeowner to go back to.” The system can also interpret manuals, giving homeowners confidence that they will be able to manage their heat pump post-installation.

Validate – the OU’s business development tool for entrepreneurs

As well as securing critical funding, Caroline says she found the process of refining and submitting her business proposal very helpful. She and all the other applicants had to use the OU’s online platform, Validate. This platform guides entrepreneurs through the various stages of building a business, such as identifying opportunities, mapping key partners and activities and value propositions. “I found the tool really useful,” says Caroline. “It moved my thinking forward and I learnt how to use some AI tools.”

Opening access to funding

These are just two of the 20 female entrepreneurs who received funding. Rob says there was a diverse range of business ideas, with some strong themes emerging. “There was a real trend towards socially minded ventures and businesses focusing on mental health.”

Cheryl thinks it’s important that women know there are opportunities out there for them and that women need to feel more confident about putting their ideas forward and asking for funding.

These are two examples of diverse businesses, both creative and both community-driven and now look at their commerciality and what’s next. The Open Business Creators Fund brings together organisations with shared missions to give women access to funding and the confidence to ask for funding.

Cheryl Gourlay
Strategic Partnership Manager at NatWest

To access the list of successful applicants, visit:

Learn more about the Open Business Creators community:

Learn more about NatWest Accelerator: