The Lonely Female Founders Club Launches To Support Women Entrepreneurs

(MENAFN- PRovoke) LONDON - Two PR entrepreneurs have launched The Lonely Female Founders Club, a community initiative aimed at connecting and supporting women-led businesses and founders in and beyond the communications industry.

The club's founders are Kat McGettigan (pictured, left) – who set up her own independent agency advisory, Fine Lines, in 2021 , after decades in agency roles including at Grayling and M&C Saatchi – and Emma Padden (right), a director of Fine Lines and founder of the PR Mums platform , where she built communities for women at various career stages.

The Lonely Female Founders Club's initial aim is to bring together other female founders to connect, share, inspire, support, eliminate doubt and grow in a safe, connected community. McGettigan said the idea came from her personal experience as a solo female entrepreneur without external investment, encountering the often-isolating reality of building a business from scratch.

She told PRovoke Media:“When I started Fine Lines it was terrifying, even after leading agencies, and I could feel imposter syndrome creeping in. I had questions that I thought made me feel incapable and unworthy, when all I needed was to have someone to ask.

“I want The Lonely Female Founders Club to be really relatable and grass roots, a community where we can have honest conversations and share our experiences. If we can all talk, connect support and congratulate each other, business success feels a lot more achievable. There's so much power in a women-only collective.”

The community launches with more than 30 founding members from a range of industries including communications, film, recruitment, retail, events and experiential, parenting and journalism.

Initial member benefits include a closed digital networking group and monthly forums featuring female guest speakers. These kick off next month with Zoe Scaman, the founder of brand innovation and strategy studio Bodacious, and PR industry veteran Rachel Bell.

The initiative comes as recent UK government research found that fewer women are owning or leading their own businesses in 2024, for the first time since 2019. In a survey of 7,800 businesses, only 15% were owned or led by women in 2024, down from 18% in 2022 and 19% in 2021.

In addition, only 2% of funding is allocated to female-founded ventures. Yet, this flies in the face of compelling research from The Boston Consulting Group , which demonstrates that women consistently outperform men as entrepreneurs.

Funding aside, issues also lie in representation, community and self-doubt . These barriers persist because aspiring female entrepreneurs lack role models and relatable supportive networks – challenges their male counterparts are less likely to encounter.

This absence of visible success stories, relatable mentors and fear of failure can create a lonely self-perpetuating cycle, deterring women from taking the entrepreneurial leap or ending their journey before they really get going. The UK government has set up a Women-Led High-Growth Enterprise Taskforce to boost the number of female-owned businesses.

Padden said:“The statistics are clear: Many brilliant women are deterred from entrepreneurship due to self-doubt. While being a female founder isn't for everyone, we want to support those who've taken the leap through relatable and shared experiences.
Our anxieties aren't unique, they are our strength. Our goal is to help women connect, network, iron out the doubt and share their successes together.”

One of the founding members is Francesca O'Connor, founder of Litmus Communications, who said:“When we look at the data behind female founders, we find this very complex set of factors coming together that expose why so many women don't take the leap or if they do, they decide to return to employment quite quickly. Often a factor is this overriding sense of failure and inadequacy that we see less often in our male counterparts.

“What I love about The Lonely Female Founders Club is its mission to create a welcoming, relatable, and accessible community where honest conversations and real connections can flourish.”

Apply for membership here .

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