Women Advancing Venture and Entrepreneurship Competition (WAVE) 2025

New opportunity for UK female tech founders to gain international exposure

The Office for Investment's (OFI) Venture Capital Unit (VCU) is launching a national campaign to identify the UK's top 10 women tech founders advancing venture and entrepreneurship.

These founders will have the opportunity to:

• feature in a lookbook circulated investors across the world
• attend and pitch at a breakfast session with prominent investors
• meet with senior or corporate mentors
• join further government and industry events to meet investors and collaborators

Eligibility criteria

The founder should be:

• a woman
• the sole or joint founder of a British technology business
• willing to participate in government initiatives

The founder’s business should:

• be looking to raise at least £5m over the next financial year
• have some market traction in place (early revenues, clinical or customer trials)

How to apply

To be considered for this opportunity, filling in the application by Tuesday 30 September 2025.

Register for the 2025 WAVE cohort.

First published 17 July 2025