Birmingham entrepreneurs named as two of the UK’s top ten female founders
Two Birmingham entrepreneurs have been named as winners in the Department for Business & Trade’s (DBT) Venture Capital Unit’s inaugural Female Founders initiative.
Melissa Snover, founder of Rem3dy Health and Nourished and Dr May Rezai, COO of MirZyme Therapeutics, join a cohort of 10 of the UK’s most promising female-led companies after DBT launched a national campaign.
A panel of VC judges scored each of the shortlisted companies, with only the most innovative products with great market potential, scalability and commercial viability making it into the first cohort of 10.
With more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, including multiple successful exits, Snover founded Rem3dy Health in 2019 and raised the highest-ever female founder seed round in UK history.
The Smethwick-based firm was recently honoured with the prestigious King’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation, for its use of patented 3D printing technology and a unique vegan encapsulation formula. It has created the world’s first 3D-printed personalised gummy stacks under the brand Nourished.
Credit: MirZyme
Dr Rezai is the COO of MirZyme Therapeutics, an early-stage clinical women’s health biopharmaceutical company, that has uncovered what causes preeclampsia and how to predict and prevent it.
The firm’s digital diagnostic algorithm takes blood test results and tells a pregnant woman halfway through pregnancy if she is going to develop preeclampsia.
Based out of the Innovation Birmingham Campus, MizZyme secured a £35m Series A funding round in Q2 of this year.
At a special launch event taking place today (September 17) in London, Snover, along with her fellow female founders, delivered one-minute elevator pitches describing their innovative solutions, engaging with some of the most prominent stakeholders and investors in the international VC sector.
Women-led start-ups have been held back due to a lack of finance, with the proportion of equity capital investment going to all-female founder teams sitting at around 2% in the UK for the past decade.
In response to this disparity, the DBT’s Venture Capital Unit launched a national campaign to identify and support the UK’s 10 most promising tech female founders. Over the coming year, each will be offered opportunities to access the Venture Capital Unit’s global investor network.
Snover said: “Recently, investment into female-led businesses has been heavily scrutinised, so today’s launch is significant, not just for me and the other nine female founders in the cohort, but for the entrepreneurial and investment communities as a whole.
“At a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to access funding, I’m absolutely delighted to have been selected in the DBT’s first ever Female Founders initiative. For over two decades I’ve been passionate about innovation in the field of nutrition and improving lives through science, and my latest company, Nourished, is creating something unique in the market.
“Securing a place on this initiative will give me an invaluable opportunity to showcase the brand and our breakthrough product to a global network of investors, all of whom are actively looking for investment opportunities here in the UK.”
You can hear from Melissa on how the corporate finance community can support more female founders at our Rainmakers Seminar on Sep 25th – click here for more details.
