Female Founders in the UK 2026: What the Rise Report Actually Found
The Rise Report 2026 surveyed 2,225 UK female founders on what drives them, what stops them, and what they need to thrive. Shannon Kate Murray, editor of High Flying Design, breaks down the findings that will feel closest to home.
The Rise Report 2026 is one of the largest surveys of female entrepreneurship the UK has produced. Commissioned by Female Founders Rise, conducted by Nottingham Business School in collaboration with WholeSum, and supported by Barclays, it gathered responses from 2,225 UK founders who collectively turn over £1 billion and employ over 9,000 people.
Here's what those 2,225 women actually said.
Why female founders start businesses in the UK
The most common motivations for starting a business weren't "I spotted a gap in the market" or "I always knew I'd be an entrepreneur." They were messier and more honest than that.
Around a quarter of founders started because they wanted autonomy; they were fed up with workplaces that were inflexible, inequitable, or just plain exhausting. Another quarter cited passion and personal interest. A similar number started because they needed a better work-life balance, often tied to childcare or caring responsibilities. And for one in ten, redundancy or job loss was the final push.
Most female founders didn't start from a position of strength or certainty. They started from a position of necessity, or frustration, or a quiet refusal to keep shrinking to fit somewhere that wasn't built for them.
Female founders and loneliness
78% of female founders say human connection is central to their entrepreneurial journey. It ranked as one of the most important factors in their experience. And yet, around one in seven of the same respondents said that loneliness and isolation was their single biggest challenge.
These are the same 2,225 women... They know what they need, but they're still not getting enough of it.
The report is direct about what happens when that connection is missing.
27% of respondents said they were struggling with mental health pressures, and loneliness and isolation sits inside that figure alongside self-doubt, burnout, and the weight of responsibility. They're not separate problems. The absence of community is part of what's driving the mental health one.
"The founder's journey can be profoundly isolating," one respondent wrote, "and one is carrying an immense burden, including the weight of personal financial stress and the livelihoods of colleagues."
The report also notes that this isn't something that gets easier as a business grows. Founders of larger businesses reported similar levels of loneliness to those just starting out.
What female founders define as success
There's a persistent assumption that commercial ambition comes secondary to purpose or flexibility for female founders. The Rise Report says otherwise.
53% of respondents defined long-term success as financial stability and profitability: consistent revenue, wealth creation, security for themselves and their teams. A further 38% said success meant scaling and, ultimately, a successful exit or acquisition.
Social impact mattered to 28% of respondents, and work-life balance to 21%. Both are real. But the headline is this: the majority of women in this survey are commercially ambitious. They want to build something profitable and lasting. The "passion project" framing that gets applied to female-led businesses isn't coming from the founders themselves.
The funding gap facing UK female founders in 2026
45% of respondents to the Rise Report 2026 identified financial insecurity and funding as their primary barrier to growth.
The numbers behind that barrier are significant. Only 2% of venture capital in the UK goes to fully female-founded businesses. More than 80% goes to all-male founding teams. For Black female founders, the figure is even more stark: between 2009 and 2019, they received just 0.02% of VC funding.
Among the founders who had tried to access private finance, nearly three quarters reported a negative experience. They described the process as time-consuming, emotionally draining, and often biased. One in ten had experienced ghosting, dismissive attitudes, or overt sexism from investors.
"The whole courting process," one founder wrote, "pitching your idea to a room full of men, can feel daunting. I'd rather get my business off the ground without this type of funding if possible, as many investors I've spoken to so far seem to treat it like a game."
Public funding was not any easier. Nearly 80% of those who had applied for grants described the experience negatively, citing opaque criteria, complex applications, and a low chance of success despite disproportionate effort. The median time to complete Innovate UK's Women in Innovation grant application in 2024 was 60 hours, according to research by Let's Fund More Women.
None of this reflects the quality of the founders. It reflects the design of a system that wasn't built with them in mind.
What support actually makes a difference
When asked what had been most helpful in their business journey, the answer was consistent: other founders.
39% of respondents cited peer and founder networks as their most valuable source of support, followed by mentorship and coaching at 32%. Family support came in at 13%. Accelerator programmes at 8%.
The advice those same founders would give to someone just starting out followed a similar thread:
27% said resilience and perseverance.
24% said build a strong support network.
21% said plan properly and know your numbers before you go looking for funding.
The figure that puts all of it in context
If women in the UK started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, it could add an estimated £310 billion to the economy. That figure was first put on the table by the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship in 2019.
The 2026 Rise Report identifies largely the same structural barriers, seven years on.
The gap isn't the ambition of female founders. This report makes that unambiguous. The gap is everything that surrounds them.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the full findings, you can now read the 2026 Rise Report at therisereport.co.uk.