Cambridge’s female founders have more than dinner planned

Before there were membership tiers or fundraising bootcamps, there was a WhatsApp group. In summer 2024, six entrepreneurs in Cambridge began building a place where women running companies could ask for help and offer it. By May 2025, co-founder Maya Gavin said the group connected more than 150 women-led startups, exchanging funding leads, investor contacts and even information about laboratory space. The shopping list was revealing. These founders needed people who could help them get on with the work.

Cambridge Female Founders Network, or CFFN, has since put a more formal structure around that exchange. It runs dinners, public discussions and practical programmes, with memberships for both founders and the people supporting them. A free entry tier sits alongside paid access. Its bet is straightforward: a founder can benefit from meeting someone over supper, then meeting the right expert when a financial model or commercial decision becomes urgent.

That makes the network an interesting small business in its own right. It must organise expertise, persuade partners to contribute and give members reasons to return. The product is the quality of those encounters.

Six founders, several day jobs

Gavin’s account, published by Murray Edwards College, puts the original problem bluntly: “The issue was structural: connectivity gaps at each stage”. Academia, industry, investment and startups could occupy the same city without reliably connecting. The response was to start making those connections themselves.

The founding group comprised Xann Schwinn, Gavin, Clarisse Beurrier, Kellyann Ripnar, Shazia Hyatt and Lluna Gallego Segrelles. In a January 2025 post, Schwinn thanked her co-founders for organising events while also running their own growing startups. The organisation’s claim to be founder-led has a fairly literal basis.

Schwinn, now listed as CFFN’s director and CEO, brings an unusual background to the job. She founded Biiah, a music healthtech business, and leads Singforce, which brings workplace singing programmes to organisations. Her creative work includes producing musical experiences and designing gatherings around food. The overlap with a founder supper club is easy to appreciate: who comes together, and how, is part of the work.

Gallego Segrelles brings another perspective as co-founder and CEO of Vector Bioscience Cambridge. In an ideaSpace podcast, she discusses translating university research into a company and connecting scientific work with commercial demands. These are the sorts of problems the network’s members are trying to solve between events.

The guest list is only the beginning

CFFN’s dinner calendar shows a deliberate mixing of people and subjects. A January 2025 gathering with Conception X brought together women working around deep tech. Another explored venture building and the relationships between universities, startups, industry and investors. The network also lists supper clubs with Carta and Goodwin.

There is some choreography behind the conviviality. An account of a dinner co-hosted with C. Hoare & Co. describes rotating seats and questions tied to each course. The format gives people a reason to speak to someone new. Otherwise, even a carefully assembled guest list can settle into the familiar arrangement: friends beside friends, strangers waiting for an opening.

The conversations have included the less photogenic parts of entrepreneurship. At a February 2025 fireside chat, Elizabeth Marston of Sotera and Jenny Barnett of Monument Therapeutics discussed investor and grant rejections, fundraising conditions and the changing demands of growth. CFFN’s recap described a near-sale of intellectual property among the setbacks discussed, without assigning every episode to an individual speaker.

The useful lesson was specific: early improvisation eventually meets the demands of boards and commercial execution. The speakers also stressed shareholder updates and informal investor conversations. A founder can copy those habits without joining anything. CFFN provides somewhere to compare how they work in practice.

Fundraising homework gets a room of its own

The Raise Lab, announced in October 2025, extended that practical approach. Its launch explanation focused on the invisible work of learning how a raise functions while still running a company. Founders were expected to work on milestones, decks, financial models and data rooms, and to develop investor relationships before opening a round.

This is a more useful proposition than polishing a presentation in isolation. A slide about growth should agree with the financial model. The amount sought should relate to what the company intends to achieve. The investor approached should have a reason to care. The programme puts those connected tasks in front of founders, investors and practitioners.

CFFN reports that the first cohort brought 40 founders together over two weeks in November 2025. Its account of the February 2026 follow-up describes a shorter, three-day programme with more investor engagement, roundtables and individual feedback. The change put more emphasis on direct feedback within a tighter schedule.

Small peer groups and structured introductions sit alongside expert sessions. Goodwin is named as a supporter. The design gives founders several ways to work through a problem: test the materials, ask a practitioner and compare experience with peers. Membership and participation should be understood as access to that process, rather than a promise of investment.

For participants, the distinction between hearing advice and using it is worth preserving. A discussion about investor expectations can end with a revised milestone; a materials session can end with a clearer explanation of the business. Those are manageable tasks to bring back to a team. The value of a cohort also depends on what its members contribute: a question from someone at a similar stage may expose an assumption that a polished presentation has hidden.

There is a price for staying involved

CFFN incorporated as a community interest company on 22 May 2025. Companies House records a company limited by guarantee without share capital. That legal structure distinguishes the network from the venture-backed businesses it supports, while still leaving it with the everyday task of sustaining an organisation.

Its published membership schedule makes the offer concrete. Founder Explorer access is free. Founder Member costs £150 annually; Fellow costs £375. Investors, advisors, operators and other supporters join as Friends, with their own free tier and annual Member and Fellow rates of £295 and £950.

The Founder Member offer includes events, office hours, warm introductions and funding deck reviews. Fellow participation adds a role in shaping the organisation. For a founder weighing the fee, the sensible calculation is personal: which current problem could these people help resolve, and will there be time to use the membership?

Partners contribute another part of the model. CFFN offers organisations ways to provide expertise, participate in events and develop joint programming. This makes the quality of matching important on both sides. A service provider wants relevant conversations; a founder wants useful advice. A relationship that serves both has a better chance of lasting beyond a sponsored evening.

Biotech, insurance and the business underneath

The network’s subject matter reflects Cambridge’s technical economy. Its June 2025 Wide Open Week programme included discussions on synthetic biology and AI in clinical trials. Speakers came from ventures including Cellcraft, Concr and SynLaia Innovations. Cultivated meat and clinical development do not share a customer, but their founders can still compare how they explain complicated work and build commercial relationships.

“If you can’t explain it, you can’t use it.”

Blanca Baez, DBounce, in CFFN’s Wide Open Week recap

That observation about interpretability and communication has applications beyond an AI discussion. A founder needs different explanations for a research collaborator, a potential buyer and an investor. Bringing those perspectives together is one reason a network spanning sectors can be useful.

The programme has broadened accordingly. CFFN lists its first Commercial Lab series across April and May 2026, covering foundations such as finance, people, sales and marketing. A Leadership Lab is listed for September, addressing founder identity, team dynamics and leading through growth. These subjects recognise that a company still needs customers, colleagues and decisions after the fundraising conversation ends.

A local network with a public argument

CFFN also took members’ concerns to Parliament. Its March 2025 evidence on female entrepreneurship described barriers involving investor bias and access to introductions, alongside a membership snapshot weighted towards life sciences. The submission argued for changes in funding access, mentoring and the visibility of women’s technical achievements.

That work gives the organisation a second role: gathering experience from individual founders and taking it into a wider policy discussion. Its current support model includes safeguarding alongside community, commercial development, funding and leadership. The inclusion matters because professional relationships involve power as well as opportunity.

Cambridge already has several routes into entrepreneurial life. Cambridge Network offers broader business connections; Cambridge Judge Business School runs programmes and events including Female Founders Day. CFFN occupies a more particular position: recurring peer relationships for women building companies, combined with access to people beyond that peer group. Its reception with EnterpriseWOMEN in May 2025 illustrates how these organisations can work together.

The network also asks something of its supporters. Its model describes participation as reciprocal, with founders, Friends and partners each contributing. That is a useful standard for a community to make explicit. Access alone is a thin reason to keep returning; answering a question, making an introduction or helping shape a session gives the relationship a purpose.

The approach depends on participation. A founder who needs a narrowly specialised technical answer may still need a specialist; someone seeking an immediate cheque needs an investor willing to make that decision. Local dinners are also most useful to people who can attend. Those are practical limits to the offer, and useful criteria for deciding where to spend time.

For someone building a comparable community, the transferable ideas are modest and concrete: start with an accessible channel, make introductions around actual needs, structure gatherings so newcomers can participate, and turn repeated questions into working sessions. CFFN’s evolution shows how those pieces can sit together. The dinner supplies the conversation; the next useful meeting gives it somewhere to go.