Solo founder. Self-funded. Three businesses. 10-month-old baby. Lottie built Brand Hackers, Upworld, and Up Talent without VC, without a co-founder - and without slowing down. Here's what the juggle actually looks like.

In this episode of the Female Founders Rise Show, Emmie Faust and Mae Yip sit down with Lottie to get honest about building a business after a baby - the planning, the personal branding, the 8pm deep work sessions, and why the juggle doesn't have to be a hot potato.

→ Download the episode playbook: https://femalefoundersriseshow.com/

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Intro & meet Lottie: solo founder, three businesses, one baby

2:30 - The three businesses: Brand Hackers, Upworld & Up Talent

5:00 - Going into motherhood with incredibly low expectations (and why it helped)

8:00 - The "exam question": planning for maternity leave 18 months in advance

11:30 - The work schedule that actually works: 9-3 childcare + 8pm deep work

15:00 - Taking your baby to meetings (and closing deals because of it)

18:00 - Personal branding for founders: why you have to post on LinkedIn every day

22:00 - The first 30 days of LinkedIn are brutal - here's how to get through them

25:00 - AI in marketing: why marketers need to be exceptional AI or lose their jobs

29:00 - The biggest mistake founders make with marketing (you're not Red Bull)

32:00 - No mum guilt: how Lottie thinks about being present at work and at home

36:00 - One piece of advice for founders balancing a baby and a business

ABOUT LOTTIE

Solo founder of Brand Hackers (fractional marketing teams for brands), Upworld (a community of nearly 4,000 startup marketers), and Up Talent (connecting startups with top-tier marketing talent). Entirely self-funded - no VC, no outside investment, just sheer determination.

Connect with Lottie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lottie-unwin-she-her-7b577742/

CONNECT WITH US 

→ Join Female Founders Rise Free: https://femalefoundersrise.com/ 

→ Emmie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmiefaust/ 

→ Mae on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mae-yip-9017b238  

→ Download the episode playbook: https://femalefoundersriseshow.com/ 

→ Female Founders Rise Show on Instagram: @ffr.show 

→ Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bl95QZVzrkA 

Emmie and Mae sit down with Rupa Popat - exited founder, angel investor, and VC fund manager with close to $70 million in assets under management.

Rupa brings a rare perspective: she's been a founder who failed her first raise, went on to exit her first business to a listed company, backed over 30 companies as an angel, and now runs Arāya Ventures which includes the Arāya Sie Fund, backing only female founders and completed its first close just weeks before this recording. 

In this episode they cover the real difference between angel and VC money (and why it matters more than founders think), what genuinely makes a business VC-backable in the current AI landscape, and the three things Rupa would tell every first-time female founder to do before pitching a single investor. There's also a moment that will surprise a lot of founders: Rupa's take on personalising investor emails.

Download the free one-page playbook for this episode at https://femalefoundersriseshow.com/

Recorded live at The Fable, London

You'll learn:

• Whether your business is actually VC-backable - and how to know before you pitch
• What gets a VC to open your email when they see 75 pitches a week
• Why you should build your data room before your first investor call
• How to use strategic angels to create FOMO with VCs
• What to say when a VC asks your valuation and you don't have an answer yet

Resources mentioned: 

Arāya Signal (Rupa's newsletter for founders): https://arayasignal.com/ 

Apply to Arāya Ventures: https://airtable.com/appig9dfaVY4inUvw/pagT6NVSWYlpwrcbF/form

Araya Sie Fund: https://www.sie.ventures/araya-sie-fund

Female Founders Rise: https://femalefoundersrise.com/

Emmie Faust and Mae Yip tackle one of the most Googled questions in the founder world: how do you actually get to your first £100k?

Drawing on Emmie's 20+ years in business and Mae's experience scaling her first company beyond that milestone, the conversation cuts through the vanity metrics and gets straight to what actually works.

From pricing your services and building founder-led sales, to understanding your marketing funnel and the power of human connection, Emmie and Mae share a practical, honest playbook for hitting that first major revenue milestone. Along the way they challenge some of the biggest myths around paid ads, expensive sales hires, and the shortcut mentality that trips up so many early-stage founders.

Whether you are just starting out or have been building for a while, this episode gives you a clear framework for getting to £100k without burning money before you have earned the right to scale.

What You'll Learn

• How to know your numbers - understanding what you actually keep per sale, not just your top-line revenue
• How to price your services - and why women consistently underprice themselves
• Why founder-led sales is the fastest, cheapest path to £100k
• How to build your founder brand so people know, like, and trust you
• Why networking and human connection out performs paid ads at this stage
• How to map your marketing funnel and fix the weakest stage first

About the Hosts

Emmie Faust is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder of Female Founders Rise - a B Corp community of 11,000+ female founders. Mae Yip is the founder of ERIC and has scaled her business past £100k in revenue.

Resources Mentioned

• The Rise Report - the largest grassroots study of female founders in the UK
• Female Founders Rise - community of 11,000+ founders
• Claude AI 
• FFR Personal Branding Challenge

Download the one-page playbook for this episode at https://femalefoundersriseshow.com/

Most founders think VC is the only path. It's not and it might not even be the right one for you.

In this episode, Emmie and Mae get into one of the most misunderstood topics in the founder world: angel investment vs venture capital. Mae raised nearly £1M from angel investors after being rejected by hundreds of VC and it turned out to be exactly the right decision for her business.

They break down how VC actually works (and why 99% of businesses aren't right for it), the real pros and cons of angel investment, and why getting rejected by a VC doesn't mean your business is bad, it might just mean you're talking to the wrong type of investor.

Honest, practical, and no gatekeeping.

In this episode:

• Why VC funding isn't right for most founders and what that actually means
• How angels differ from VCs (it's their own money and that changes everything)
• The pros of angel investment: flexibility, domain expertise, open doors
• The cons: smaller cheques, slower growth, the hustle of finding them
• Friends and family funding, the honest take
• Where Mae actually found her angel investors
• The three takeaways every founder needs to hear

Resources mentioned:

• SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) — tax efficient investing for early stage UK businesses: gov.uk/guidance/venture-capital-schemes-apply-for-the-seed-enterprise-investment-scheme
• EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) — gov.uk/guidance/enterprise-investment-scheme-introduction
• Female Founders Rise Fundraising Accelerator Page: https://femalefoundersrise.com/accelerator
• EIS Association: https://www.eisa.org.uk/
• Melanie Perkins story : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LywX3T5Scc
• Get the episode playbook here: Angel Investment vs VC Funding: What Every Founder Needs to Know.

New episodes every Tuesday. Join the Female Founders Rise community — 11,000+ female founders: femalefoundersrise.com

Welcome to the Female Founders Rise Show, the podcast for women building businesses, hosted by Emmie Faust (serial founder, angel investor, mum of four, founder of Female Founders Rise) and Mae Yip (founder, angel-backed, and expecting her first baby).

Every week they get into the conversations female founders are actually having privately, about money, burnout, parenting, relationships, hiring, growth, and the stuff nobody else is talking about. Joined regularly by founders, investors and operators who've actually done it and are willing to be honest about all of it.

Every episode ends with three actionable takeaways and one closing question to every guest: "what's one piece of advice you'd give a female founder ?"

No fluff. No polished answers. Just the honest conversation and the practical takeaway.

New episode every Tuesday.

Part of Female Founders Rise, a community of 11,000+ women building businesses together.