● New advisory services marketplace called “SBE Advisory Collective”, will power female-founded businesses to higher growth
● Partners include BDO, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Real Time Australia and other leading firms
● Data underscores need for more support for female-founded businesses
Australia’s peak body for supporting women entrepreneurs, SBE Australia, has today announced the launch of a new advisory model which will connect high potential female-founded businesses with the services they need to achieve high growth. Leading global professional services firm, BDO has been named key partner.
The SBE Advisory Collective, launches in response to last year’s inaugural research report which showed that through 2017-2021, just 3.7% of private sector funding secured by start-ups went to solely women-founded companies (SBE and Techboard Data). This then dropped to an even lower 0.7% in 2021-22.
Deloitte researchers surveyed 155 individual businesses that were supported by three major female focused investor groups: SBE Australia, Heads over Heels, and Scale Investors. Based on survey data from past participants, Deloitte estimates that the 341 businesses supported by SBE Australia, Heads over Heels, and Scale Investors over the past 10 years that are still active facilitated economic activity worth just over $1 billion to the Australian economy, and almost 5,000 equivalent full-time roles, in 2021-22.
The report highlighted important insights on social, financial and cultural barriers that still exist and prevent women from reaching equal participation in entrepreneurship.
“What that research did was illuminate a gaping hole in support for funding women-led businesses in general,” said Nicole Cook, CEO of SBE Australia. “It was jarring. When we started the research project, we thought the percentage of funding going into the channel would be far greater.”
“We stepped back and questioned – why, though so many promising women-led businesses exist, are they not getting funded? A major finding was that while support for early-stage businesses through accelerator programs and grants is fairly strong, there is a cohort in the middle that just don’t have the critical support they need to get funded for commercialisation. They are the group that sit between early and mature businesses, what we would call ‘scaleup’.”
Now in its 11th year of operations, alumni of SBE’s various programs represent more than 110 businesses classified as ‘scaleup’ and more than 250 startups (early-stage businesses.) Across the many success stories, >$2b in capital has been raised, 17 exits have been recorded as IPOs or trade sales and thousands of jobs have been created both in Australia and offshore. SBE Advisory Collective’s pure focus is on providing high growth scale-ups with the strategic support needed to achieve their goals .
“This is about providing the critical support that the ‘scaleup’ cohort needs to qualify for funding through our existing programs and now through advisory services delivered by our partners through the Advisory Collective,” said Cook. “We’ve learnt that the current ecosystem of support for women founders is disjointed and is not going to stimulate parity in entrepreneurship fast enough. By wrapping advice around the scaleup founders and CEOs, they can be better placed to achieve their business growth metrics and qualify for investment. We hope that by doubling down on building a pipeline of investment-ready scaleup businesses, the quantum of funding allocations going to women-led businesses will get closer to parity.”
The Advisory Collective is designed to provide a boost to these mid-stage businesses that are moving into a level of maturity where they require specific advice to unlock growth or prepare for exit. While many will be well known to SBE, having been through one of their accelerator programs, Ms Cook hopes that other businesses at similar stages may come forward which qualify for the advisory services and need help reaching commercialisation milestones. Equally, while there are around 100 service providers included in the Advisory Collective, she welcomes other specialists that can contribute expert services to SBE members.
“The natural candidates to access the advisory services will have completed one of our accelerators, but there are many other businesses out there not yet known to us that need this kind of support. We also encourage those teams to
