Rise & Shine: Female Founders Breakfast

In 2021, just 5.2% of all venture capital (VC) funding in Australia went to women-founded start-ups, despite female-led businesses delivering double the revenue per dollar invested than those founded by men.

To help support our local ecosystem of women Founders, Investment NSW and UNSW Founders are hosting a Female Founders breakfast event at Sydney Startup Hub on Tuesday 18 October to bring together inspiring women from Sydney’s Startup community.

Event facilitator Kristen Phillips, Senior Manager of Entrepreneurship at UNSW will be "up close and personal" with Ananya Sinha, VC at Artesian, Etta Watts-Russell, Founder of Lactamo & Frances Atkins, Director & Cofounder of givvable in lively conversations sharing insights and best practice tips to build successful businesses along with:

• How by responding to a customer or societal problem in a unique or innovative way can create positive impact
• How to stand out to investors (the right investors, with female partners, who are able to evaluate or advise female-led startups)

Who should attend:

• Want to connect to a community of like-minded female founders who aspire to innovate and leverage the ecosystem to build and scale successful businesses.
• Are seeking insights and best practices on how to rise to the top of a male a dominated industry, from women who built successful businesses catering to the challenges of women.

Whether you’re curious about entrepreneurship or already running a successful tech company - this is an event not to be missed!

Event Agenda

8:00am - Event Commences with breakfast & networking

8:30am - Panel discussion with Ananya Sinha, VC at Artesian, Etta Watts-Russell, Founder of Lactamo and Frances Atkins, Director & Cofounder of givvable, facilitated by Kristen Phillips, Senior Manager of Entrepreneurship at UNSW

9:30am - Post event networking

10:00am - Event concludes

About the Speakers

Etta Watts-Russel, Founder of Lactomo

Etta is a global award winning (Fortune 500) corporate lawyer with 15+ years of experience in company management. As a mother of 4, Etta was disappointed to see the lack of solutions and support for breastfeeding women – worldwide. In 2019 Etta put together a team of experts and founded Lactamo, bringing an innovative FemTech product to market for breastfeeding mothers. Internationally patent protected and clinically validated, Lactamo is the first and only product with the ability to both proactively and reactively address the common breastfeeding problems, facilitating and supporting breastfeeding.

In an independent clinical trial published recently in the International Breastfeeding Journal 100% of women reported that they would recommend Lactamo to other mothers to assist their lactation, and the trial concluded that Lactamo is “a valuable breastfeeding aid”. Lactamo has been called a “game-changer in breastfeeding” by leading lactation consultants, and has won multiple awards including the Australian MedTech Actuator Award (2019, Australia and India), "Best New Business Idea 2020" (TEDxSydney with St.George) and the 2021 Business NSW Award “Outstanding Startup”.

Ananya Sinha, Investor at Artesian 

Ananya is passionate about exploring how technology can be harnessed to create social impact. Ananya is currently a Venture Capital Investor, specifically supporting Artesian's Female Leaders Fund and Climate Fund.  Ananya invests in high-growth, female-led startups overlooked by other VCs and underrepresented in the startup landscape.

Artesian, founded in 2004, by Jeremy Colless, Matthew Clunies-Ross & John McCartney. is a global alternative investment management firm specialising in public and private debt, venture capital, and impact investment strategies. The iconic outback windmill logo represents their mission to tap unrecognized value and deliver sustainable performance in challenging environments. Artesian manages money for government organizations, pension and superannuation funds, insurance companies, corporations and industry groups, financial planners and family offices.

Frances Atkins, Director & Co-founder of Givvable

Frances' start-up, givvable, is a technology platform focussed on sustainability. Frances co-founded givvable with her sister Naomi Vowels to make it easier for corporations to justify buying sustainable, responsibly made products by tracking and revealing the positive impact of their actions. 

givvable is and AI-powered global supplier sustainability intelligence platform that lets any organisation validate the sustainability credentials, attributes and initiatives of suppliers and trading partners - and see what third party validated actions, initiatives and commitments they’re making. givvable automates millions of data relationships to tell you how your suppliers, vendors & partners advance your sustainability & ESG agenda. Using givvable thus allows organisations to validate their own stated sustainability credentials to their customers, investors and community.

Kristen Phillips, Senior Manager of Entrepreneurship at UNSW Founders

Kristen manages UNSW’s women’s startup program, called New Wave, which under her leadership has supported over 500 female founders since it’s establishment 2018.

In 2021, Kristen expanded the early ideas program (focussed on customer discover & idea validation) to include a scale up and U.S. Market focused offering – the New Wave U.S Ready Bootcamp, in partnership with the U.S Embassy & Consulates in Australia. Kristen has vast experience & insights to share, having supported hundreds of women Founders to turn their ideas into startups and evaluating women-led businesses for global expansion. Kristen has been extremely passionate and vocal about championing women founders and has featured in various publications to discuss and create awareness on gender disparity in Entrepreneurship (The Australian, Kochie’s Business Builders , Smart Company & The OZ).

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This event is part of Spark Festival and upholds the Spark Code of Conduct.