In “Beyond the Boys Club: Making Investing More Accessible”, we welcome Kristina Pereckaite to share her story of founding South East Angels and the obstacles she faced as a woman in the male-dominated field of investing.
Kristina is an advocate for diversity at the investors’ table, which is one of the main reasons she utilised her own expertise to start the women-led network. With women counting for only 14% of angel investors in the UK, there is huge untapped potential for women to add value to the UK economy whilst building their own wealth, argues Kristina, and syndicates are a vital tool in the world of investing. Moreover, when the boardrooms are more diverse, this has a positive knock-on effect, diversifying both the founders backed and the problems targeted.
In this episode, Kristina shares her insights on why it is so vital that we make investing, particularly angel investing, more accessible for women and how this can be achieved.
This is a must watch for those that are interested in angel investing but often feel held back by preconceived ideas of who can invest.
You can listen to the episode on Spotify here.
Episode summary
Topics discussed🎙️
- The unique role which angels play in backing startups before VCs, providing both capital and hands-on support.
- What angel investors look for in founders, including founder mindset, resilience and coachability, and why execution matters more than ideas alone.
- How to build and run an angel network, drawing on Kristina’s first-hand experience of how South East Angels operates, and how collaborative investing reduces risk.
- The challenges faced by underrepresented founders, and why diversity among investors and changing investor attitudes is essential.
- The integral ingredients to a founder-investor relationship, from balancing expectations and transparent communication to long-term alignment.
Key takeaways💡
- Angel investors step in before anyone else will: They invest at the riskiest stage and help shape companies from day one.
- The founder matters more than the idea: Investors want to back people who can adapt, learn and execute as markets change.
- Syndicates strengthen early-stage investing: Sharing expertise and capital improves outcomes for founders and investors alike.
- Diversity is still a challenge: Structural barriers continue to limit access to funding for many founders, despite strong evidence that diverse teams perform well.
- Trust and communication underpin success: Strong founder-investor relationships are built on openness, alignment and long-term thinking.
Notable quotes🔊
- “Women have less money. They control less of the money. Angel investing is a way for women to build their wealth over time.”
- “The Innovation Blind Spot, a term coined by a VC called Ross Baird, refers to the fact that the problems that really, really matter are less likely to get funding, because the money goes to where you will make more money. The solution is more diversity.”
- “When I started South East Angels, I wanted it to be 50% women, 50% men. What I quickly realised was that it was impossible. I couldn’t do it, as hard as I tried, because there are just less woman investors. I realised that we need to make angel investing more accessible and we need to women to just talk about, without the pressure to invest. There’s also a problem of women feeling like they need permission to do something. Future Angels is a community for women to come together and have a space where they can talk about wealth and angel investing with no commitment.”
- “IP can be make or break. As an angel, we’re not always looking at it from the point of view of exiting right at the end when they’ve become a huge success, but what if they can exit by selling the IP? We’re looking at companies pre-revenue, sometimes even pre-product, so we’re looking at what value there is if they don’t make it to commercialisation.”
