Emmie Faust: From £200k on Dragons' Den to Female Founders Rise

Emmie Faust is on a mission. Having set up, grown and sold 11 businesses and won investment on Dragons' Den, she’s set her sights on helping female founders rise. After a breakdown and long Covid forced her to stop working, an idea that began with a Google Form and a LinkedIn company page sparked her recovery and has turned into a 12,000-strong community for women in business.

Speaking to Sir Richard Harpin on the Business Leader podcast, Faust talks about the Female Founders Rise community, why every one of her successful exits was bootstrapped and what she now tells founders pitching for investment.

In our interview, you will learn about:

• The mistake that wiped out one of her businesses overnight and what it taught her about delegation
• What really happened after her Dragons' Den investment from Theo Paphitis
• Why she believes most entrepreneurs shouldn't run more than two businesses at once
• Her advice for early-stage founders pitching for investment and the approach that puts her off

Faust was 25 when she and her business partner applied to Dragons' Den almost on a whim, curious to see whether the show was "real". She entered with a side project, an online bingo and betting comparison site called Gaming Alerts, rather than the media agency she'd already built with more success. She asked for £200,000 for 10 per cent, valuing the business at £2m, and secured investment from Theo Paphitis.

However, the business never turned a profit. Faust puts that down to several factors: her heart wasn’t in online gambling, the sudden cash injection made her spend less carefully than she had running lean bootstrapped businesses and she delegated the company’s SEO to an agency without understanding what it was doing.

That agency used tactics Google considered manipulative and, as a result, the site was penalised and lost all its rankings overnight. "Even though you can delegate in business, you have to understand what you're delegating," she says.

Faust urges leaders not to rely on a single marketing channel. Losing all the company’s organic traffic in one go was what finished the company off but gave her valuable learnings to apply to her subsequent ventures.

Why bootstrapping beat every investment round

Faust has taken outside money twice in 11 businesses. One failed. The other she wound down herself, returning the investor's money once she realised she couldn't deliver what he wanted. Every business that made her money, by contrast, was bootstrapped.

Her media agency Jack Media ran for ten years, largely as what she calls "the spine" that funded her to test other ideas alongside it, sometimes two or three at once. The most successful of those side projects was GDM Digital, an early mover in programmatic advertising that grew to around 40 people before she and her co-founder sold both businesses separately.

Faust argues that proving a market before taking investment keeps founders in control: "If you've got a business, if you're creating revenue and profit, you do have a business.” Bootstrapped founders keep more equity, choose their own exit timing and aren't beholden to an investor who eventually wants out.

From breakdown to a 12,000-strong Female Founders Rise community

Female Founders Rise began as a passion project. Faust had suffered a breakdown, was recovering from long Covid, had four children at home during the pandemic, and had just moved her family to Wales and back to London when everything "became too much." Told to stop working and start therapy, she needed something small to hold onto. She set up a LinkedIn page and a Google form.

The growth that followed was fast. Her first in-person event in December drew 10 people. By March, an International Women's Day event drew around 80. She posted on LinkedIn that she wanted to partner with Google and LinkedIn, get coverage in the Financial Times and become a B Corp within the year. Someone from Google saw the post and got in touch two months later. Most of what she'd written down happened within twelve months.

Four years on, the community has grown to 12,000 members. It's funded mainly through sponsors, including London Business School, British Business Bank, Barclays and Lloyds, because most members don't pay to belong. Around 250 currently pay for events or its fundraising accelerator, which delivers £2,000 of value for £100 with no equity taken.

What Emmie Faust tells founders raising money

Faust's advice to early-stage founders seeking investment centres on relationships built well before the ask. "People need to know, like and trust you before they buy from you or before they invest in you," she says. Many of the businesses she's backed were ones she'd already followed on LinkedIn, watching their founders demonstrate passion and expertise before any pitch was made.

Her clearest warning is against generic outreach. As an angel who invests specifically in female founders, she says she still receives a high volume of pitches from men who haven't done basic due diligence. Her advice? Understand why a specific investor would care about your business before contacting them, since angel investors are backing a relationship as much as a company.

She's invested around £120,000 across more than 30 female-led businesses since starting out, in amounts between £1,111 and £11,111. "Often for me, it's just saying to that founder, 'I believe in you and what you're doing,'" she says.

The gap she's still trying to close

Faust points to research from her organisation's own Rise report on the barriers still facing female founders. The report’s findings are stark. They include fully female-founded businesses receiving just 2 per cent of equity investment in 2024, with over 80 per cent going to all-male teams, and that without affordable childcare infrastructure, the UK forfeits up to £38bn in gross value added every year.

Faust also notes that 80 per cent of young people can't name a female entrepreneur, which is part of why Female Founders Rise runs campaigns like 'You've Got What It Takes' to raise the profile of women in business.

When asked what comes next, Faust says she has no plans to slow down or commit to a rigid long-term structure, having deliberately avoided setting up a fund so she can keep her freedom. Her aim is simple: keep investing, keep growing the community and help more women reach their first million in revenue or funding.

What can leaders learn?

Prove the model before you take the money. Faust’s only failures came from the two businesses she took outside investment for. Every business she bootstrapped succeeded. Investment amplifies what’s already working and may plaster over what isn’t.

Never let one channel carry the whole business. Losing all her organic search traffic overnight was what killed her first venture. Diversify how customers find you before you’re forced to.

Build the relationship long before you need the cheque. Faust says people need to know, like and trust a founder before they’ll invest, and most of her own angel cheques went to founders she was already following. Visibility has to come before the ask.

Listen to the full conversation with Emmie Faust on the Business Leader podcast.