You've worked hard to earn it. Now put it somewhere that matters.
XX Invest is a membership for UK women who want to back female-founded businesses, and understand what they're backing. 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 before you commit we'll always tell you exactly how that deal works.
Membership is separate from any investment you choose to make. Your membership fee is never invested, and we don't give financial advice or recommend investments. Every investment decision is yours.
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 company is raising money, you never hear about it. And the rooms have historically not been full of women.
The work behind a single decision is substantial: finding the companies, checking them, 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, plain 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 every decision is yours. Some opportunities will be offered through an investment platform we work with, others directly by the founder. With each one, we'll tell you how it works, what it costs and who's involved before you decide. 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 plain-English guides on how early-stage investing actually works: terms, dilution, risk, and building a portfolio rather than making one bet.
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 want to go ahead, you'll invest either through the platform we use for that deal or directly with the founder. We'll be clear which it is, every time.
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 story sessions.
Hear directly from the founders we host, in their own words, and ask the questions you'd want answered before deciding anything.
Keep in the loop.
As founders raise with our members, you'll get updates on how their businesses are doing, in the good quarters and the hard ones, so you can follow along without always being in the room.
Plain-English guides.
The XX Invest Guide and resources library: how early-stage investing actually works, from reading a deal to building a portfolio, at your own pace.
A room of peers.
Quarterly dinners and regular drinks meetups with women asking the same questions you are, at roughly the same stage. Good company, not just good networking.
Clarity on every deal.
Before you decide, you'll know exactly how the investment works, who holds what, and what it costs. No surprises in the small print.
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. Your membership fee covers founder story sessions, members' events and the XX Invest Guide. It's never invested in any company.
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.
Stay in the loop
A monthly letter from Julia and Sam. What we're learning about early-stage investing in female-founded businesses, what happens inside XX Invest, and first word on our open sessions.