I dressed royalty but investors treated my work like a hobby
A FASHION designer whose clothes have been worn by the Duchess of Cambridge has told of how she struggled to raise money for her business while pregnant because male investors treated her work as “a hobby”.
Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs, who runs Beulah, a fashion label that also counts Kate Moss and Jessica Alba among its fans, revealed how tough she found raising venture capital, even five years after the brand had been established.
The entrepreneur has backed The Daily Telegraph’s Women Mean Business campaign, which aims to tackle the disparities in available start-up funding between men and women.
“I was eight months’ pregnant while raising our third funding round,” Rufus Isaacs said. “I remember coming into meetings and feeling like it was the elephant in the room.
“I was asked a couple of times by men, ‘Do you think you’ll come back?’”
Rufus Isaacs, married to Rupert Finch, a lawyer, with two children, Georgia, three, and Sienna, 10 months, is a childhood friend of the Duke of Cambridge.
Even though her clothes had already gathered many A-list fans by that point, Rufus Isaacs said her business was “not taken seriously – maybe it was seen as more of a hobby”.
The investors she met were “mostly men”, and her attempts to win their backing were unsuccessful. “I remember I heard that an investment fell through on the day I gave birth,” she said. “It was just too much.”
She continued to try to raise funds soon after. “About three weeks after I had my baby, I remember going out to meet some investors, looking down and seeing I had baby sick on my top. It [the meeting] didn’t go very well. “I always say to my friends who have businesses and who are having babies – get fundraising done before. But you can never time these things.” Rufus Isaacs and Lavinia Brennan, her business partner, have had to rely more on crowdfunding and raising money from family and friends to get their business off the ground. More recently, they received venture capital backing from a fund that invested in other female entrepreneurs as well. Beulah was founded eight years ago with a mission to help human trafficking victims in India.
It donates 10 per cent of its profits and also employs hundreds of women affected by trafficking there.
Two months ago, the two entrepreneurs were invited to Downing Street to discuss the issue of modern slavery and human trafficking. Rufus Isaacs is the latest in a number of high-profile women to support the Women Mean Business campaign, including Samantha Cameron, Mary Portas and Baroness Brady.
The campaign was launched to highlight the difficulties women face in securing funding for their businesses. Just nine per cent of funding for UK start-ups goes to women-run businesses each year, according to the Entrepreneurs Network.
Men are 86 per cent more likely to be funded by venture capital and 56 per cent more likely to secure angel investors (wealthy individual backers).