FoundHer FundHers December: Tara Attfield-Tomes on Building to Sell, Owning Your Numbers, and Why the Funding System Needs a Rethink

Welcome to FoundHer FundHers - a new strand of the STYLISA FoundHers platform, created to spotlight and support female founders navigating the funding landscape, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Our mission is simple: Demystify capital. Champion confidence. Build bridges.

For the final FoundHer FundHers interview of the year, I’m speaking with a woman who’s challenging the entire funding infrastructure - and doing it with style, substance, and systems-level insight. Tara Attfield-Tomes is the founder of EAST VILLAGE., The 51% Club, and co-chair of The Lifted Project Birmingham. She’s not only changing the narrative, she’s helping rewire the system. In this interview, she shares a powerful blend of practical advice, policy insight, and no-fluff guidance for women at every stage of their funding journey. Whether you’re bootstrapping, fundraising, or somewhere in between, this is essential reading.

Tara Attfield-Tomes is helping reshape the funding landscape by centring women, regions, and real-world solutions.

You’ve built and supported multiple platforms that champion female founders. When did funding first become a personal or professional focus for you and why?

I’ve actually bootstrapped my main business – visibility agency, EAST VILLAGE. – for the past 12 years, so I don’t approach it from personal experience necessarily. What’s compelled me to champion the importance of women entrepreneurs getting access to the right funding was witnessing the lack of education around what’s actually available. Over the years, I’ve watched clients and members of The 51% Club – my second baby – make terrible choices, waste time applying for grants that aren’t suited, dilute themselves by selling too much equity (and, in some cases, ended up being pushed out of their business), and be ignored by banks who will only lend to large scale manufacturing businesses.

The landscape isn’t just bleak; it’s setting women up to fail by not telling them what’s actually available and what’s best suited at each stage. The lack of equity – especially access to insight, networks, and the money itself – is shocking. So when I was invited to co-chair The Lifted Project’s Birmingham Board, I jumped at the chance to make an actual difference.

From your perspective, what are the most common funding myths that hold women back from applying - whether it’s grants, equity investment, or public money?

Too many founders think that all money is just money… and it never is, in the business world. Unfortunately, that lack of proper education and shows like Dragons’ Den, are making angel investment the ‘sexy’ thing. So everyone suddenly wants to go down that route, without actually understanding whether they’re really investable, if they even want to go on that kind of growth journey, if they’ll be happy with investors getting involved in decision-making, and with little-to-no knowledge of an exit strategy.

Equity investment is completely different to needing cash flow – especially for survival. Often, founders could just focus on selling their “stuff” and generating revenue if they want to get cash in the bank. Likewise, grants (especially via local authorities) are seen as ‘free money’ and can take a founders’ focus away from what they should be doing because they then have lots of boxes to tick. Grants can be incredible for innovation – for those extra things you couldn’t do without that money – but they’re not cash flow.

Basically, the whole system is a mess and the problem is that funders – be that banks, alternative lenders, angels, VCs… - aren’t working together to create a roadmap that helps founders navigate what type of funding is best for them at each stage of growth.

You’re a founding member of Let’s Fund More Women, and now co-chair The Lifted Project Birmingham. What are the biggest structural barriers you see when it comes to female founders accessing capital - particularly in the regions?

Where do I even start?

Let’s talk investment first… the money, the networks, and the investment in innovation has typically been at the centre of the UK’s economy: London. This means that the regions aren’t just being overlooked, they’re not even in investors’ sights. Why would they be? They’re investing in London-based ventures, or international businesses with a London address, and getting great returns. They already think they’ll get a nosebleed if they go beyond the M25, so they’re certainly not taking a risk by investing money outside of Greater London.

Devolution is helping this, as there’s more focus on regional innovation – and the creation of the UK’s 15 Combined Authorities is definitely a driver. Having some money at a local level means that the regions are empowered to build their own ecosystems, which is what’s needed. The infrastructure in terms of business support needs to create deal flow – and in fact, just great businesses that can be funded via any route.

Once these ecosystems form, it means that businesses are being given the best chance of survival and, most importantly, the wider funding landscape is then compelled to get their share of the pie. Local and Combined Authorities want to reap the benefits of a thriving entrepreneurial landscape, creating Co-Investment Funds to drive that growth; retail banks start to see the reality in lending to bigger businesses that have a regional footprint, who would never be located in London because of astronomical property prices; and more R&D money flows through local universities and via the likes of Innovate UK.

All of this helps, but then we have to look at the systemic barriers that hold women back. This money is great, but if a woman is still the main caregiver – the cost of childcare soaring – how will she find the time to start and scale a business? The entire infrastructure has to change.

You often speak about the disconnect between what women actually need to scale and what’s being offered. What do you believe funders and policymakers consistently get wrong about female entrepreneurship?

People think that women lack ambition. They absolutely don’t. The 51% Club has 1,500 members (growing daily) and I can tell you that ambition is in abundance. What women often lack is the confidence in themselves to run a business, the support needed to focus on their business, and the access to the information and networks needed to build their business.

Don’t get me wrong, the fundamentals of running a business – eg. developing a go-to-market strategy, building a sales funnel, and creating a cash flow forecast – are really important. But that doesn’t mean we need cookie-cutter accelerators and incubators that get hundreds of founders into a room to show them presentation after presentation. What we need are tailored interventions that help women – well, all founders actually – understand how to make their first £1m revenue, how to actually go from kitchen table to global exporting (not a PR story, but actual, tangible advice and access to what’s needed), and programmes with money attached to them.

I think that funders and policymakers just consistently misdiagnose the problem, focusing on the founder and not the faulty ecosystem. They fail to prioritise wealth generation for women, instead settling for policies that increase the number of marginal businesses rather than unlocking genuinely high-growth enterprises.

Through The 51% Club and EAST VILLAGE., you’ve worked with founders from pre-revenue to high growth. What funding advice would you give someone at the very beginning of their journey?

Set up your business as though you’re going to sell it… even if you’re not. Build the structure, the processes, the team, and your role in a way that’s going to strengthen as you scale. This means understanding each area of your business, but not being responsible for it; as and when cash flow allows, work with experts and focus on your own zone of genius. You are a huge asset to your business – but you can’t do it all and your time is best spent where your strengths are.

Then, when it comes to funding sit down and really map out your ambition – where do you want the business to go? Then work out what it will take, financially, to get there. For example: a bigger team means bigger offices, so budget for those extra desks; getting your products into retail might mean higher production costs but lower margins, make sure your numbers are right; and if you’re tech powered, account for future development work. Once you know what it will take financially, then you can plan what funding you might need at each stage. Be intentional. Don’t seek funding when you’re desperate for cash because you’ll make silly decisions.

Tell us about your experience of working alongside Innovate UK. What has collaboration with public funding bodies taught you about how the system can, or can’t - evolve?

The Let’s Fund More Women movement was born out of a genuine outrage. When Innovate UK decided to cut the number of recipients in half – from 50 to 25 – for the Women in Innovation Award last year, it uncovered a whole suite of issues with the current system. Lengthy (as in, averaging 80 hours to complete) application processes, terrible timing (deadlines during school holidays when women have other priorities), and biased assessors (often men who don’t understand the sectors in which women typically innovate), to name a few. In 72 hours, that outrage went viral, built a community of 600+ women innovators, and saw Innovate UK reverse their decision and award all 50.

That really was just the beginning though. I was pleasantly surprised at just how open and willing Innovate UK were to engage. They didn’t shy away; in that first 24 hours we were in contact with the then CEO, Indro Mukerjee and incoming interim CEO, Stella Peace. In my opinion, they were incredible from the off: they held their hands up that they overlooked the impact of the decision (it was something much bigger than just the Women in Innovation award) and they truly wanted to listen. And listen they did. Not just about awarding all 50 women, but how they could genuinely create lasting change within the organisation.

Led by Emily Nott, who heads up Inclusive Innovation Programmes, we have worked side-by-side with them ever since that initial 72 hour period. They proactively reached out to communities supporting underserved founders, hosted roundtables to get a representative set of opinions about how Innovate UK is and should be supporting businesses, and they took action. Earlier this year, all of that hard work came to fruition and they released their 10 commitments to women innovators, and they’ve continued to work with us on ensuring these pledges are kept.

Like any organisation, Innovate UK isn’t perfect, but in my opinion they have one of the most passionate and dedicated leadership teams who genuinely want to have a positive impact.

You’re also a founder yourself. How have your own funding experiences, or frustrations - shaped the way you now advise others?

I’ve bootstrapped EAST VILLAGE. so my sole focus has been on revenue generation. That said, The 51% Club is a free-to-join community so corporate sponsorship is a major part of our commercial model – and I do have a big frustration seeing the same old people and organisations (mostly men) being given the money.

Not all female founders want to raise capital. In your experience, how can women make smart financial decisions without external investment - and still build something impactful?

Simple – know your numbers. And I say this as someone that likes to spend money, not save it. I am always inspired by the power that entrepreneurs hold when they really understand their financials. It’s certainly not my zone of genius, but understanding everything from how much it is to turn on the lights through to the implications of the latest tax increases is the difference between survival and disaster.

You speak openly about the importance of infrastructure, not inspiration. What kind of financial infrastructure do you think actually moves the needle for female founders?

Properly roadmapped support: what funding is available at each stage and who’s offering it. Founders have to spend so much time trying to work out when they should be speaking to British Business Bank versus their own bank, or whether angel or VC investment is right for them: if we just had one place that did proper, unbiased signposting, we’d be saving a lot of time.

This isn’t just about signposting though; it’s about understanding how money can have the best impact on a business. Women are, traditionally, creating businesses based on solutions to problems they’ve faced, or wanting to positively impact a specific group. This doesn’t mean they’re not ambitious or don’t want to create the next high-growth scale-up, but these kinds of businesses and industries – the likes of health care and consumer goods – need patient capital not fast-paced VC exits. It doesn’t mean that VC funding is wrong or not suited to some businesses, it just means we need other types of funding and investment that’s a better fit for female-powered ventures.

What role does personal brand play in funding, especially for women who may not have traditional networks or insider access?

Being a PR expert and having recently repositioned EAST VILLAGE. to focus on visibility, I could talk about this forever.

A founder's personal brand is a critical asset in any business, regardless of funding need. It has the ability to bypass those structural biases and lack of networks that we’ve mentioned earlier. For a female founder lacking traditional “insider access”, her public brand can provide credibility, proof of her expertise, and help her gain authority in her industry. All crucial for a successful business, as well as attracting funding. This trust can help with customer acquisition and community building, which would prove crucial for something like a crowdfunding campaign.

Likewise, investors are looking at the founder, as well as the data. Even hardcore VCs will still make part of their decision based on whether they back the person in front of them to deliver, so having this underlying level of credibility can really help.

With all your ecosystem work, from retreats to policy to public speaking, how do you stay energised and hopeful, especially when progress is slow?

I’m here to make a change, and that’s not going to happen by sitting back and just working on one piece of the puzzle. I meet so many people who say that they’ve been talking about “these same issues” for the past 20-30 years, and my response is: “well, what have you been doing for all this time?” I have no desire to spend decades on this; we need to move the dial and move it quickly, so you’ve got to put in the work.

I’m not even being a martyr about it – I absolutely love it! I am lucky because I get to work directly with founders and see how everything positively impacts them, via EAST VILLAGE. and The 51% Club, at the same time as having influence at policy level through The Lifted Project and by building my own reputation in this space and being invited to roundtables and the like.

What does ‘being fundable’ mean to you - and how can more women own that identity?

Again, this completely depends on what type of funding they’re going for but the three key areas are: market validity, the credibility to deliver, and a plan to scale. Keep it simple and focused, know your numbers, and research the kinds of growth capital out there so that you’re fully informed and going for the right type of funding.

In terms of owning this identity, it all comes down to confidence. More women need to project their capability to lead and grow a business... put it out into the world. Stop worrying about what people might think and post the damn story, speak on that stage that scares you, reach out to customers directly: do what you’ve got to do to make your business a success.

Final question we ask all FundHers: If you could share three things you’d want every female founder to keep in mind, whether they’re just starting out or scaling for investment, what would they be?

Build to sell, even if you don’t plan to.

Design your business with structure, processes, and intention from day one. This forces you to understand your financials, reduces your reliance on being the bottleneck, and ensures that you remained focused on your ambition. Don't let your business rely on you; let it benefit from you.

Make your numbers your superpower.

Stop guessing and know your margins, your tax implications, and your cash flow to the penny. Get external help if you need it; you don’t have to be the expert, but you do have to understand it. Smart financial decisions – with or without funding – rely on this. I want more women to get rich and this will only happen if we all move away from survival and instead focus on intentional growth.

Use your personal brand to bypass the system.

Stop waiting for a "warm introduction" from the old networks. Your personal brand is your most powerful asset for building credibility, attracting customers, and securing smart capital. Be intentional about your visibility: speak on the stage that scares you, share your expertise, and actively project the confidence and authority of a scale-focused CEO. You need to own that identity and put it out into the world.

Finally… YOU GOT THIS!

A massive thank you to Tara Attfield-Tomes, for agreeing to be one of the early FoundHer FundHers interviewees, and becoming a part of the STYLISA FoundHers community. If you’re interested in finding out more about her work:

Connect with Tara on LinkedIn

Discover East Village.

Discover The 51% Club