💰 Money > Mentorship
Welcome to the Sixty-Sixth edition of Unstoppable Founders!
👑 #Unstoppable Female Founder
Please meet this week's Unstoppable Female Founder (turned VC), Jasmin Thomas Venture Partner at Ada Ventures.
Founder-turned-VC, Jasmin Thomas didn’t set out to launch a business—but sometimes the most impactful founders stumble into entrepreneurship while solving personal challenges. When Jasmin was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, her experience inspired her to launch Ohana, a CBD-infused skincare brand centered on women’s wellbeing.
While working in a co-working space for CBD founders, she met Jessica Steinberg—the only other woman in the building. What started as friendship quickly grew into collaboration, and together they co-founded entOURage Network, a platform designed to empower women and create opportunities within the legal cannabis space.
In 2021, Jasmin launched Alexandria Angels with a mission to increase women’s economic independence. The initiative focuses on three core pillars:
Increasing the presence of women on cap tables to grow their net worth.
Securing more funding for female founders—especially with only 2% of VC funding currently going to women.
Supporting first-time investors through learning and mentorship.
By 2023, she joined WeAreXena as a UK Founding Partner, helping to build gender-diverse tech teams by placing female engineers in leadership roles. This led to her involvement as a Delegate to UN Women UK, contributing to the 68th session on accelerating gender equality by addressing poverty and systemic barriers through gender-conscious financing.
Spotting a theme here?
Jasmin’s journey into venture capital began at Ada Ventures, where she excelled as one of their most successful scouts, recognized for her talent in identifying promising startups. This success led to her current role as Venture Partner, where her focus is on startups across climate equity, economic empowerment and healthy ageing —ensuring that overlooked talent is brought to the forefront of innovation.
From a personal perspective, Jasmin has been refreshingly open about her journey: her MS diagnosis, the challenges of navigating the world with dyslexia and neurodivergence, and the societal biases that women of color continue to face.
"Being a woman of colour is totally different. Your direct nature, tone of voice, approach to work, and comfort in the workplace can be seen as really challenging. The constant battle to try and fit into a culture and a non-diverse team that you don't feel comfortable with—I’ve found it really challenging in the past and really limiting in terms of how far I can progress."
I’m incredibly honored to have Jasmin joining our speaker lineup at the Unstoppable Founders Summit on February 28th. Grab your free ticket to hear from Jasmin and many other inspiring women as they share their stories, insights, and practical advice from across the startup ecosystem.
💶 Female Founders Raising Capital
Talky | EdTech | B2C | Pre-Seed
Learning a second language early in life is like giving your kids a superpower—they develop sharper memories, stronger problem-solving skills, and a natural flair for creativity. Additionally, it opens doors to understanding new cultures, expanding their sense of identity, and becoming confident, empathetic communicators.
Please meet Talky, the only digital tool that leads to fluency and real-time conversation for kids! Talky transforms language learning for kids by immersing them in an interactive world where they conquer challenges through real dialogues, making mastering a new language as engaging as playing their favorite game.
With subscriptions for both parents and education institutions, Talky has already achieved great traction; 755 users (B2C) and 35 schools (B2B) across 5 key languages.
The Raise: Talky is raising €750K to drive their GTM and reach €1M ARR and 5000 users within the next 18 months!
📣 #TheRant
Money > Mentorship
There’s a lot of conversation regarding ‘mentoring’ female founders in various capacities. Which don’t get me wrong, mentorship has its benefits, personally - it’s an added bonus, but it wont move the needle. You can’t mentor someone Into building a successful business.
No amount of advice, coffee chats or general guidance will turn a startup into a scalable, profitable business without the right resources. Business success comes from actionable advice that’s directly tied to funding, growth and user acquisition.
We’ve got to replace the “kid gloves” with realistic expectations and tough guidance. Building a startup is one of the most challenging things we can choose to do in this world. It takes perseverance, resilience and grit.
We’re often given soft advice, focusing on confidence-building, resilience and "leaning in." Meanwhile, male founders are pushed to take risks, secure big deals and scale aggressively. Personally, I don’t think we need to be “handled gently” (child birth anyone?) — we need direct, challenging guidance and accountability.
I'm not saying that we shouldn’t seek mentorship. Rather, mentorship should be a combination of providing resources and guidance that leads to actionable outcomes. Guidance without actionable steps tied to measurable outcomes is a waste of time.
What We Really Need:
Hands-on investors: Investors who don’t just mentor but sponsor female founders through active deal-making, support customer pipelines and partnership opportunities.
Playbooks that move the needle: Instead of broad advice, we need step-by-step frameworks for customer acquisition, pricing models and sales strategies.
Hard conversations: We deserve candid, strategic advice on the risks we should be taking, the partnerships we should be chasing, and the growth hacks we should be deploying.
Growth-oriented mentors: Instead of mentors who focus on “emotional resilience,” we need ones who say, “Here’s how to triple your revenue in 6 months. Let’s map it out.”
Capital with strategic advisory: Investors who don’t just write checks but actively guide founders through product pivots, market entry and customer acquisition.
Mentorship isn’t the solution—it’s the bonus. The solution is removing barriers, funding women fairly, and providing frameworks that lead to real results. Women don’t need someone to hold their hand or “coach” them endlessly—they need capital, guidance that comes with clear outcomes, and networks that translate into opportunity. Women should be funded on their vision and ability to execute, just like their male counterparts.
💰#HypeCorner
This is where we cover funding rounds raised by female founders and their teams across Europe. With less than 2% of VC funding going to female led startups, the HypeCorner is simply our way of congratulating and celebrating these founders!
The #HypeConer is packed with raises, to the sum of €49.28M+!
🇬🇧 Prof Kate Black FREng Co-founder & CEO at Atomik AM
🇬🇧 Bibi Nelson & Isabel Lizardi Vilá Co-founders at LAIIER
🇮🇪 Noelle Daly Co-founder & CEO at Mobility mojo
🇳🇴 Lauren Pedersen Co-founder & CEO at SportAI
🇸🇪 Hanna Johansson & Kinga Grenda Co-founders at Adsorbi
🇩🇰 Heidi Gytz Olesen Co-founder & head of Drug Screening at Commit Biologics
🇳🇱 Lilia Planjyan & Joëlle van den Brand Co-founders at AguroTech
🇫🇷 Anne-Sybille Pradelles Co-founder & CEO at Formance
🇳🇱 Diana van Stijn, MD PhD Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer at Lapsi Health
🇬🇧 Zoë Blake CEO at CareLoop Health
🇬🇧 Polina Vorms Co-founder & CPO at Zelt
Huge congratulations to these founders on their teams. Wishing you all continued success!
🎤 Events for founders
👩💻 {VIRTUAL} Unstoppable Founders Summit is a free virtual event for female founders happening on the 28th of Feb. with actionable and inspiring talks focused on raising capital, scaling sustainably and inspiring your ambition to build a high growth company. Join us and 500+ founders - register for free.
🇸🇪 {Stockholm} TECHARENA themed ‘Becoming the Best in the World’ for next years conference happening Feb. 20th & 21st. Speakers include Sir Richard Branson, former Finish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph and more
🇫🇷 {Paris} GLOBAL SUMMIT by hello tomorrow celebrates the Deep Tech community on the 23rd & 24th of March with over 3,000 founders, industry leaders and investors.
🇦🇹 {Vienna} LTST25 hosted by Female Founders is back May 8th & 9th and this years theme is ‘The Real Deal for Founders’ Early bird tickets on sale now! Join the waitlist for the LTST25 Pitch Track and Competition.
🇬🇧 {London} SXSW lands in London June 2nd - 7th taking over the city merging creativity, culture and technology. SXSW London are now taking applications for musicians, film makers and speakers!
🇪🇸 {Madrid} South Summit Madrid - June 4th - 6th brings together global innovators, bold entrepreneurs, leading corporations, and visionary investors. Early bird tickets now available.
🇳🇱 {Amsterdam} European Women in Technology is a must for your calendar, happening June 25th & 26th. 5,000+ women in tech, diversity advocates, allies and change makers for Leading the Digital Revolution!
OUR ASK: With Unstoppable Founders Summit, are looking for partners to join us in creating the most impactful virtual event for female founders acrossEurope. Are you a VC, Tech Platform, Services Provider or University looking to connect with female tech founders? Get in touch to learn about our partnership options!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Jen
👋🏼 Are you a founder in need of support with you startup? A few ways I can help:
1. I support founders with their fundraising strategy and securing capital.
2. I build winning Go-To-Market and Growth Marketing Strategies
3. I provide mentoring and advisory services for founders, senior marketers and general operators.