2025 IMPACT REPORT

In 2025, Ladies Who Launch focused on helping women and non-binary entrepreneurs access three things every founder needs: useful knowledge, meaningful relationships, and the confidence to move forward.

We brought our Funded & Fearless event series to London and Austin, rebuilt our newsletter around practical resources, reincorporated virtual education, and worked alongside partners who share our belief that high-quality business support should be accessible. Every LWL event and resource remained free.

By the end of the year, our community had grown by more than 10% year-over-year.

2025 at a glance

• Two sold-out Funded & Fearless events

• Nearly 750 event registrations

• 318 people onsite across London and Austin

• Every post-event survey respondent rated their experience 5 out of 5

• 45% average newsletter open rate

• One new virtual event, followed by a permanently available recording and resource

• Funding opportunities, tools, founder stories, and practical guidance delivered throughout the year

Funded & Fearless: London

On June 12, 153 people came together at Canva’s London headquarters for an evening centered on funding, resilience, and using AI with greater confidence. Demand exceeded the capacity of the original event space, requiring the team to open a second room for programming and networking.

Mireia Llusia-Lindh, founder of DeMellier, joined Goldman Sachs’ Anna Skoglund for a candid conversation about building a global business over time. Mireia encouraged founders to dream bigger, reminding the audience that entrepreneurship is not about taking the most risk. It is about learning to manage risk well enough to keep going.

Experts from Alitheia Capital, Awaken Angels, Responsible Finance, London Business School, and Enterprise Nation helped founders understand venture, angel, and institutional finance options. Canva and OpenAI then moved the conversation from theory to practice with live demonstrations of AI-powered branding and ChatGPT for small business.

The evening closed with chef and entrepreneur Asma Khan in conversation with LWL co-founder Sarah Friar about entrepreneurial and financial confidence.

Everyone who completed the post-event survey rated the event 5 out of 5. The strongest demand for what should come next was clear: grant programs, accelerators, mentorship, more events, and practical business tools. Got it! 😅

Funded & Fearless: Austin

On October 15, 165 people gathered at Canva’s Austin campus for the second Funded & Fearless event of the year.

Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, and Austin Cocktails co-founder Jill Burns opened with a direct conversation about earning retail placement, navigating partnerships, and making the big ask. Kim challenged the room with one deceptively simple question: “Who told you that you couldn’t?”

Frédérique Campagne Irwin of the National Women’s History Museum moderated a funding conversation with René Graham of Renzoe Box and Karen Howland of Koia. Together, they encouraged founders to understand the tradeoffs between debt and equity, protect ownership where possible, pursue non-dilutive capital, and build relationships with local banks and angel networks before the money is urgently needed.

OpenAI’s Jenny Sha demonstrated ways founders could use ChatGPT for financial analysis, research, web development, and business strategy. Canva’s Maddie Dudley showed how AI-powered design tools could turn an idea into a campaign and landing-page concept.

Sarah Friar and The League founder Amanda Bradford closed the program with lessons from the full business lifecycle, from inception through acquisition. Anna Collins left the room with another reminder worth carrying forward: “Projects are temporary, but relationships are forever.”

All Austin survey respondents rated the event 5 out of 5, and most expressed interest in staying connected with other Launchers through an online community.

Practical support between the big moments

In July, LWL relaunched its newsletter as a monthly source of open grants, curated tools, founder stories, and manageable actions entrepreneurs could take immediately.

Our monthly sends between July and December reached a 45% average open rate, with the strongest-performing regular edition reaching a 51% open rate. A special edition sent two days before Christmas, featuring three grant deadlines and opportunities ranging from $1,000 to $20,000, still earned a 48% open rate despite the closeness to the holiday period, suggesting that access to grant funding is a critical need of the LWL community at all times through the year.

In September, LWL also returned to virtual education with executive coach and author Dina Denham Smith. The conversation explored emotional labor, workplace triggers, recovery after emotionally demanding periods, and how founders can work with their emotions instead of treating them as a distraction. The edited recording was subsequently made available through LWL’s website and YouTube channel.

What 2025 taught us

Founders want inspiration, but they also want specifics: where to find capital, how to evaluate funding options, how to use new technology, and who they can call when the path gets complicated.

They also want one another.

In 2025, Ladies Who Launch created spaces where founders could learn without a paywall, ask honest questions, and build relationships that continued beyond a single evening or email. That combination of access, education, and community will continue to shape where we go next.