Jordan Dargue on empowering female founders

We interviewed the serial founder and angel investor to hear her expert insights

Jordan Dargue is a woman who wears many hats: co-founder of Lifted Ventures, an investment platform established to empower female founders; original founder of Dargue Associates, a business consultancy focused on startups; active non-executive director; and angel investor.  

Our reporter Robert Welbourn spoke to Dargue about a range of topics, including the growing fintech scene in the north of England, supporting females in the fintech space, and the importance of ESG to both businesses and investors. 

If you could just start with some background info on who you are please. 

I’m the co-founder of Lifted Ventures, which was set up in 2023. Lifted Ventures are a leader in gender-smart investing, helping female founders to access early stage funding in order to fuel the UK Economy. We operate regionally, everywhere other than London and South East. 

Lifted Ventures exists to increase the flow of early stage capital to female and underrepresented founders, promoting the business benefits of backing women.  

We’ve developed a flywheel approach. At the core of Lifted Ventures is the Lifted Ventures Angel Networks – we operate two angel networks and a women’s syndicate alongside a mixed gender network, all of which are passionate about supporting female founders. In addition to this, Lifted Ventures has a significant network of senior women in venture capitals (VCs) who are working together to improve outcomes for women seeking investment.   

We understand that women-led businesses and women angels need tailored pathways to ensure that they are successful. We offer tried and tested Investment Readiness Support and Angel Education programmes, as well as developing blueprints to support diverse female founders to land funding.   

We work with public and private sector partners to build sustainable, diverse angel networks and investment readiness programmes. All projects are underpinned with driving diversity and inclusion across the landscape. 

Before Lifted I was the co-founder of Fund Her North and Women Angels of the North and co-leader of North Invest. 

With Lifted Ventures we’re on a female-focused journey and we want to make the north of England the UK investment capital for female founders. 

What was it that drove you to focus on female founders specifically? 

I’ve always been one of those people: if there’s a challenge, a problem, I’m driven to find the fix. There is a real challenge for female founders in the current economic landscape, and I’m passionate about supporting change and driving the agenda to ensure that female founders have equal access to capital and support. Female founders play a pivotal role in our economy and it’s important that we showcase the value women-led businesses can add; if they’re able to access the right support and capital in order to grow and scale their businesses. Some of the main barriers for women being able to access capital are systematic obstacles, low-quality business networks, lack of role models and mentors, industry and sector societal bias in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and a lack of funding available to sectors and industries in which women typically operate businesses. The biggest challenge is also the lack of female and diverse representation amongst both institutional and private investors, as well as limited access to bespoke education to support female founders. 

As an angel investor in my own right, I know there’s great portfolio and business benefits to backing and supporting female founders. They grow twice as quick, despite receiving less capital invested than male founders, and yield better returns on investment, generating a 35% higher ROI compared with male-led companies 

We see some really phenomenal, passionate and driven women in our ecosystem. I’m really passionate about being able to support these women and give them a level playing field in an industry which can be extremely daunting. 

Your experience of working with a northern focus must have helped, because you already have that understanding of how to support a fringe group. 

I know the ecosystem rather well here in the northern powerhouse regions. I’ve lived and worked here all of my life. I know the challenges in the ecosystem as well as the opportunities and have worked extremely hard to develop relationships with key stakeholders and industry experts. I understand the industry extremely well; I know that I can’t operate like the London ecosystem, for example, but I can use my knowledge, connections and expertise to create our own evolving ecosystem, and really embrace and help to further develop and level up the northern regions for female founders. At Lifted Ventures, we really are on a mission to make the north of England the gender-smart investment capital of the UK and Europe.  

Have you seen any push back when you approach investors promoting female-led companies? 

We’ve got a good support network of what we call co-investors, people who invest in the opportunities we present alongside our angel investors. All of those investors are really keen to see more female-led deal flow. However, we must do more if we are to move the dial.  

We know women are more likely to back female founders, and we have been extremely lucky to have also built amazing networks of great male allies. Like I’ve said, we must do more in this space and at Lifted Ventures, we are extremely driven to build out further angel capacity across the UK in order to back and support more female founders specifically at the pre-seed and seed stages of early stage investment. These investors supporting founders at an early stage bring a huge amount of value, not just in the form of capital but also in the form of expertise and networks.  

In addition to our core focus of building angel capacity, we’ve also created a community steering group of venture capital (VC) investors from our co-investor network – all of which are keen to support this agenda. We work with them closely to understand some of the challenges and barriers, as well as opportunities, that a VC has which perhaps prevents more female founders applying or indeed accessing investment. We meet bi-monthly, sharing best practice as well as seeing how we can address some of the barriers and help create a more joined up investment ecosystem for early-stage female founders. 

What we’re hearing currently from VC’s is they’re not seeing enough deal flow coming through from female founders. That’s what causes the real imbalance. So we know we need to focus on building the pipeline of opportunities and originating good investable businesses. This only comes via education and support networks such as universities, business support programmes and accelerators, so we must do more in this area. In addition to this we must all work harder to make sure we’re introducing businesses to these co-investors in the region, and of course supporting more female founders on how to be prepared for investment in order to access these investors. This is not something that we can fix or change overnight, but if we can start and implement a changing narrative, grow angel capacity and work hand in hand with VC investors, it will help to build out a wave of change for founders looking to raise venture capital funding. 

However, unfortunately, we know unconscious bias still exists in this landscape, and we know there’s a lack of female representation in investment firms, operating in investment manager positions and specifically on investment committees. We need more women in VC’s and IC committees to help drive systematic change; it’s really important that we see a broader and more diverse team in these firms in order to support diverse founders and businesses.  Again, this is a change which we know will take time, however we know that this is now becoming a focus for some VC’s.  

And that’s where the networking side of what you do must be invaluable; if you’ve got a VC firm that has a woman working there, then they’re probably actually already much more likely to hire more women, so being able to make those introductions must be priceless. 

Reports highlight that a female founder is more likely to get investment from an investment fund through a warm introduction. That’s where organisations like Lifted Ventures are really key, making that introduction and holding the hand of the female founder in that representation element.   

All of the deals I have successfully led have come off the back of a warm introduction to investors. It makes a real difference. 

On the Lifted Ventures website there’s a lot about education. Is that because there’s a need for systemic change? 

There is, there’s a real lack of education for female founders and female angel investors.  

Women require a different form of education to our male counter parts, and at Lifted Ventures we have created tailored training, helping female founders to better understand and prepare to enter the investment landscape. For example, our founder education is designed to address known barriers for female entrepreneurs as well as help to develop key entrepreneurial skills, networks and most importantly, confidence. We know that when a female founder takes part in an education programme associated to raising capital, they gain increased access to capital. In addition to this, our female founder access to finance education helps to support and bring more women into entrepreneurship, increase community participation and innovative entrepreneurship as well as creating ambitious, diversified business opportunities ready for investment which help fuel regional economies. 

In addition to this, our women angel education programme has been a real catalyst for providing more awareness of angel investing for women. The education programmes we have built for women angel investors have not only distilled some investment myths, but have also showcased that you can invest at a low level, make use of tax efficient investment schemes, and help women make better informed decisions when it comes to looking at investment opportunities. Through our education programmes we have been able to really help women understand that they can get involved in supporting early stage businesses and understand how to assess investment opportunities correctly, through a very clear due diligence process as well as further developing personal networks with likeminded people in our syndicate approach learning environment. 

Is there any area that you’re particularly focused on at the moment as an angel investor, or is it just a case of assessing each investment on its individual merit? 

Lifted Ventures is sector agnostic. We made that decision because we know that some of the non-traditional investable businesses can indeed have high growth potential like retail, distribution, and hospitality, for example. These sectors and industries are not often seen as high-growth potential businesses. However, these businesses can have high growth potential and can be successful, investable businesses. That’s why we chose to be sector agnostic: we can open up a world of great opportunities regardless of sector and industry and enable our angel investors to truly diversify. 

Myself personally, I tend to invest in something that’s solving a real problem or disrupting a market or traditional process; that’s what really excites me. I’ve also got passion for pet tech and have invested in three pet tech companies now. But I’ve also invested in SaaS because my background was in SaaS and more recently in healthtech and fintech. 

It wouldn’t be a conversation about tech if we didn’t mention AI. Is it something you’re interested in as an investor? Would you consider incorporating it into what you do with Lifted Ventures? 

Absolutely, without a doubt. With AI, the more you get to know about it, the more exciting it becomes. Recently I’ve been speaking to a lot of businesses and seeing how AI works for them; I’m seeing more sophisticated AI in some than others.  

At Lifted we’ve supported a number of fintech businesses. I love fintech and I think the more AI can be embedded into the offering, the more a business looks to be investable.  What’s more, sophisticated AI has a huge impact on and improves fraud detection, risk management, customer service, and investment analysis and predictive analytics – it’s so exciting!  

Further to this, AI can have a huge impact on business sustainability; that’s of big interest for our investors, particularly from an impact angle. 

Do you think ESG is a hot new trend for fintechs, or do you think they’re finally waking up to the importance of it? 

I think there’s a bit of both. When ESG came out, it replaced the old CSR (corporate social responsibility). CSR was often seen as a tick box exercise. The re-forming of CSR to ESG has seen it achieve increasing levels of significance within organisations, so it’s not just seen as something that has to be done for compliance reasons or because it’s the right thing to do. It’s proven to be something that drives growth and drives revenue in businesses and actually makes the business more attractive to potential investors. 

One of the things in both our female founder education programmes, for example, is that we will educate them on how to bring ESG principles into the business to help them create value. This is really good from a business growth perspective and even more fundamental from an investor perspective. 

To me, ESG is key. It’s not just a tick box exercise anymore; it’s absolutely a way of growing a successful business. 

Jordan is on the judging panel for the 2025 UK FinTech Awards.

Image: Jordan Dargue