Two CEOs are setting up a £10 million VC fund to back female founders

Debbie Wosskow, the CEO of home sharing platform Love Home Swap, and Anna Jones, the former CEO of publisher Hearst Magazines UK, are raising a £10 million venture capital fund to invest in female entrepreneurs in the UK.

The duo announced their new AllBright fund on Monday, saying it will help to address the funding gap that currently exists between male and female led companies.

Wosskow told Business Insider that a number of high net worth individuals and angels have already contributed towards the £10 million fund but was unable to provide an exact figure. The company hopes to make up the remainder from other limited partners (LPs) between now and the end of the year.

In April, analysts at tech research firm CrunchBase found that just 10% of the world's VC money currently goes to female founders.

In addition to the VC fund, AllBright is launching a crowdfunding platform in the next two weeks so members of the public can back female-founded companies, with investments of £100 and upwards. There will also be an "AllBright Academy" at some stage, which will provide female founders with online courses and mentoring sessions.

"The VC fund alone doesn't cut it because you can't get the scale, no matter how big the fund is," said Wosskow, who is chairman of AllBright. "But the fund, plus the crowd, and the academy will do it."

Wosskow, an angel investor herself that has backed the likes of Kate Unsworth's smart jewellery firm Vinaya, was keen to stress AllBright is for companies of all shapes and sizes, not just those in tech.

"This isn't about tech," she said. "The statistics on women-led business are just so crap. We felt like we needed to do something to change the conversation."

Wosskow, who was tasked by the UK government with writing a report on the sharing economy in the UK, was also keen to highlight that AllBright isn't "anti-men," pointing to several male employees on the AllBright team.