From CFO to Female Founder Champion: David Horne’s Story

Speaker A: Just before we dive in, a quick moment to say we won.

Speaker B: The Secrets of Learning and Development has officially been named Podcast of the year 2025. And we're still smiling. We didn't create this podcast with awards in mind. We started it because we love real conversations about growth, challenge, leadership and learning.

Speaker A: But this award, it tells us that those conversations are landing, that they matter. So if you've been listen, listening, sharing, joining as a guest. Thank you. Let's get into today's episode and keep that conversation going.

Speaker C: My wife and I, as I say, we've been married about four years at that stage. So we, we sold off what few possessions we had, we packed our clothes into four suitcases, we got on board an airplane with one way tickets on a two year employment contract. And that was 39 years ago. That was the beginning of, uh, a pretty dark period in my career where like just literally having had a very successful corporate career, all of a sudden my first solo venture was not very successful. And over a period of about 18 months, I burned through 100 grand in savings. She found that if women started businesses and were funded at the same level as men were, it would generate an incremental £250 billion, um, to the UK economy. There goes Rachel Rees's problem.

Speaker B: It would do.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Come and listen to David. Rachel.

Speaker C: In the wine trade in London, you can go to a wine tasting every single day. You don't pay for it. You're invited in. Of course you're expected to spit it out, but you know, occasionally a little bit trickles down your throat.

Speaker B: Occasionally.

Speaker C: Literally for 18 months, basically I was getting every day.

Speaker D: Welcome to Secrets of Learning and Development, the podcast where we explore the insights, trends and hidden gems that shape the future of personal and organizational growth. Join your hosts, Valerie and Julia as they uncover the secrets of successful learning and development. Featuring expert interviews and practical tips for executives and professionals. Whether you are seeking the latest training techniques, leadership advice or ways to build a learning culture, this podcast is your guide to unlocking the potential within yourself and your organization. Get ready for a journey into the world of learning and development. Now here's Valerie and Julia to start today's episode.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Secrets of Learning and Development. I'm Julia Bend, founder of Premier Coaching, and I'm joined by by my wonderful co host Valerie Merrill, training professional and founder of Merrill Consultants. Together we bring you conversations with guests who have stories worth hearing and today is absolutely one of those.

Speaker A: Hello everyone. David Horn's career has taken him from Vancouver to Zurich to London with some big pivots along the way. He's held senior CFO roles, helped businesses grow through fundraising and acquisitions, and built ventures of his own. A uh, thread running through his story is how learning German kept opening doors at key moments and how a personal turning point changed what he wanted his work to stand for. These days, David supports founders and leadership teams with growth and funding, and he's also become a strong voice on fairer funding for female founders.

Speaker B: We met David at the Women's Business Awards, where we sat at the same table on the night he won Businessman of the Year. We later, uh, won Podcast of the Year, so inviting him onto the show felt like a fitting moment. David, welcome.

Speaker C: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Welcome. Wow. I was just wowing by the. When, when you met m, you got your man of the, uh, Year award and we won Podcast of the Year award, you know, whoa.

Speaker B: It was brilliant.

Speaker C: I know, I know. Three award winners on one table.

Speaker B: On one table. Who could have said it and sat next to each other as well. Anyway, let's take us, take us right back. So when did young David in Vancouver think his life was going to look like this?

Speaker C: I don't think he ever totally envisaged it would turn out like it did. But young David, I think the pivotal early moments were two family trips to Europe. One when I was 12 and the other when I was 15 and the one when I was 12. Uh, so I had just finished primary school and it was over the summer we came to London. I fell in love with London. I've been in London, in love with London ever since. And then we toured around on the continent. We were in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Benelux, and then went back to Canada. And when I went into high school in Canada, in the English speaking part, it's mandatory to learn French. And all of my friends at school were kind of got to learn French and I'm like, no, but the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and I've seen all these things and it's so cool. And, um, I just thought this was such an opportunity because I found that first trip to Europe both fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating because everything was different. The food was different, cars were different, the architecture was different, the fashion was different, everything was different. But I was frustrated because I couldn't communicate. So I went back to school and started learning French. And then in my second year of high school, I had the opportunity to pick up another language. And the choice was German or Spanish. And I'd never been to Spain, but I'd been to Germany so I picked German. And it turns out that my German teacher was just one of those incredible teachers who has a significant impact on your life. She was, she was Austrian, I reckon she was descended from Prussian colonels though because she was tough as nails. And I, and I remember, you know, uh, because German has a fairly complex grammatical structure. They've got masculine, feminine and neuter. They've got different cases, different adjective endings on the word, blah, blah blah. And of course in English we're not taught any of that stuff. So I had to figure it out. And I figured it out and found that it was quite a logical structure once you kind of work it through. But the really interesting thing was that my marks in English started to go up because I all of a sudden knew how to write proper sentences. So that was really cool. And then three years later when I was 15, so my sister who had gone with, I'm the youngest of four, my sister who's the next above me, she had finished high school and she had gone back to visit family friends in Holland and met a Dutch guy and fell in love and got married. And so the whole family came out uh, when I was 15 and uh, by this time I'd done two years of German and three years of French at high school. And it just opened my eyes to the possibility of Europe. And I remember very clearly flying back to Vancouver at the age of 15 thinking one day I'm going to live in Europe.

Speaker B: And that's it. And that's all she wrote.

Speaker C: And that's all she wrote. Ten years later in 1987, my wife and I, we've been married for four years. So we, we, we. I was working for, for PwC at the time. Well, uh, Price Waterhouse back then, but PwC. And when I qualified I said I wanted to work in the German speaking office. And I went into the office one day and there was a job offer to join PWC in Zurich. And so my wife and I, as I say we've been married about four years at that stage. So we, we sold off what few possessions we had, we packed our clothes into four suitcases, we got on board an airplane with one way tickets on a two year employment contract. And that was 39 years ago.

Speaker B: Wow. No fear. No fear. And an opportunity.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: That's something to take from that. So you were aiming for banking? Uh, when we were.

Speaker C: Yeah, when I, when I started my career I was thinking of going into banking. And when I was at university I actually uh, I had summer jobs at the Royal bank of Canada, which was the biggest bank in Canada at the time and just working as a bank teller. But they knew that I wanted to go into a career in banking. And so the manager of the branch I was in, where I was for two years, he sort of saw that I had ambition and talent and he said, I'll rotate you around so you can get a bit of a feel for more than just doing the bank teller stuff. And then in the winter, between my third and fourth years of university, he called me into the branch one day and he said, look, Canada's gone into a deep recession. Ah, this was the early 80s and it was a deep resources based recession. He said the bank has frozen the graduate training program. I don't know when it's going to be unfrozen. He said, david, I'll give you a job as a bank teller. And then he looked me square in the eye and he said, but David, you didn't go to university to be a bank teller, did you? And I didn't know it at the time, but that was the first piece of career advice that anyone ever gave me. So I went up to the, I went up to the campus recruitment office and spoke to them and they said, well, look, the uh, uh, chartered accounting firms are doing their annual milk round in about three weeks. I had two friends whose dads were chartered accountants. So I went and spoke to them and got a feel for what it was all about and applied. And back then in the early 80s, so it's called the big four now pick KPMG, PWC, Deloitte and Eye. Back then it was the big eight. They've all merged now to form the big four. And I got interviews with seven of the eight and I got a job offer with Price Waterhouse, which is arguably one of the most prestigious.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Um, uh, and it was really interesting because about six months after I started working with the firm, I found out that the reason that they picked me, besides my devilishly good looks, was.

Speaker B: You beat me to it.

Speaker A: There

Speaker C: was that, uh, unknown to me, Pricewaterhouse had, uh, recently acquired a large accounting firm in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. And they were desperate for Anglo Saxon qualified accountants who spoke German.

Speaker B: Exactly what, you know, Germany keeps, or German keeps, uh, showing up as a turning point in your career more than once, actually. So when did you first realize it was going to shape your career?

Speaker C: I first realized it, um, when we got the offer, uh, from Pricewater. I was Zurich, because for me that was a dream on two levels. It was A dream on the level of. I have always said I wanted to work in Europe and it was a dream on the level of I'm going into a country where I can use my language skills. Uh, and I mean, there's not many more beautiful places on the planet than Zurich. It is a, it is an absolutely gorgeous city. It's not a big city. It's about, I don't know, today it's probably about half a million people, but it's absolutely beautiful. You know, you've got the mountains, you've got lakes and rivers and a beautiful old town and everything works, everything's on time. Um, it's. Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you love it. So you just said that you and your wife moved to Zurich with one way tickets, right?

Speaker C: We did.

Speaker B: So what was the biggest adjustment in those first months?

Speaker C: The biggest adjustment was for my wife because, you know, I, I was going to work. I had an immediate community, I had a con, uh, I had a group of people that became friends. Um, my wife arrived there, she didn't have a work permit, she had a residence permit, so she was allowed to live in the country. Um, the literal, the literal translation of her residence permit is permitted to remain with husband. So quite, quite parochial. Quite parochial. And uh, you know, she, she didn't know anyone. She, she had, she had gone in her last year of university when, when we talked about, you know, this becoming a possibility. She had done a German course at university, so she spoke a little bit, but not really. She didn't have a network, she didn't know anyone, she wasn't allowed to work. And I would say the first three or four months for her were incredibly challenging. She's a teacher and she finally found an international school where she could be a volunteer. And she went in and did that three mornings a week. And that was a huge, huge opportunity that really opened things up for her. But yeah, without question, the hardest thing was those first three months for my wife were really, really hard.

Speaker B: Maybe we should have your wife on the show because it'd be interesting what that transition meant for her, you know, because there's loads of changes and you know, you've got no fear, you know, you're very driven. So therefore, once there's an opportunity there, you're in, you're into it and you make, and you make good of it. But you do, like I said, you, you had some really good, um, what should I say? You had some good role models in, in terms of your teacher and in terms of your, the, the guy that actually gave you a job. So we're going to take a short break, and then Valerie's going to come back and, um, continue the conversation.

Speaker C: Fantastic.

Speaker A: Welcome back. Let's, uh, let's pick it up from Switzerland, David, because this is where things really started to move.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: At 27. Became a financial controller at 27.

Speaker C: So at 27, I left Pricewaterhouse and joined my biggest client, uh, which was the Swiss subsidiary of an American tech hardware company called NCR. And there I was, 27 years old. I was the number two finance guy in a company that had US$500 million in sales.

Speaker D: Wow.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker C: That's brilliant.

Speaker B: So what did you learn quickly about leading at this level?

Speaker C: I learned quickly. I mean, I learned quickly a few things. Number one, I learned that as an auditor, whilst I had a good overview of the company, I had no idea what happened at a detail level. And the devil is always in the detail. Um, I learned a lot about managing people. And one of the really interesting things was because, I mean, at price Waterhouse or PwC, you know, I was managing small teams, but the teams were changing all the time. So you might be, you know, you're on one client and there's three of you, and then you're on another client, and it's three totally different people and another client, and you might have one from one. And, you know, so it was always chopping and changing, but all of a sudden I had a team of, I think it was about 35 people. And it was the same people who reported to me on a. On a regular basis. And I remember going through some of the management training stuff that. That the company did. But I. All of those early management training skills I learned in German. And it's really interesting, even today, when I'm sitting there thinking about a management issue, it's the German words that come back in my head.

Speaker B: So Germany really does run through you, though.

Speaker C: It has a significance. It is. It is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker A: And then you had London, you had corporate moves, you had redundancy, the BBC and later being walked out after a merger.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: So if you had to pick. If you had to pick up one moment from that era that shaped how you work now, what would it be?

Speaker C: Well, I mean, being walked out the door following the merger with a nice check was the beginning of. Because the check was important too, of course. Um, and it was just before Christmas, so the Horn family had a nice Christmas that year. I had no stress from work and I had a lot of cat.

Speaker A: Excellent. Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, but what happened Next was the pivotal thing. One of my co directors, this was a PR agency that I was with and we got bought by one of the really, really big groups, emerged into that. One of my co directors at the PR agency was also on the board of directors of a FTSE 100 company. And the man who was the chairman of that company had just gone from executive chairman to non executive chairman. And in his spare time he decided that he wanted to do something completely new. And so he launched a new business as what's called a cash shell, uh, on aim, the junior market of the London Stock Exchange. So he went out and he raised £3 million. He had the reputation and the contact because of his FTSE 100 stuff, uh, raised £3 million and said, we're going to build a digital media and publishing business. And he started working on that. And my friend Angela saw him one day and he was looking really stressed. And she said, john, are you okay? What's wrong? You're looking really under pressure. And John said, I'm looking for a CFO who understands mergers and acquisitions. Do you know anyone? And she smiled and she said, in fact, I do. And so my redundancy post redundancy period lasted maybe three months. And then all of a sudden she introduced me to John. And um, John welcomed me in and welcomed me as a co founder of this business. And over the next three years we raised £60 million in funding, bought seven private companies, took over another listed company and we scaled the company from about 1 million in turnover to nearly 28 million pounds in turnover in just three years.

Speaker B: That's absolutely fantastic. During those three months, what were you thinking of doing?

Speaker C: Oh, I thought I'd become a consultant and I had no idea what that meant. So I used to sit at home and read books and go to the IOD and take things out of their library and. Yeah, I had no idea.

Speaker B: Talk about that phrase, you know, speak my name when I'm not in the room. That's exactly what has happened to you. And then all of a sudden you landed this.

Speaker A: Yeah, amazing.

Speaker B: That is, you know, to me, you know, you're a living example of that phrase in my mind anyway. But it's great that you're just sitting there having a read and all of a sudden here you are. I think it's fantastic.

Speaker A: So that was fantastic. But then we have what we're calling the wine business, eg, AKA a midlife crisis.

Speaker C: A midlife crisis.

Speaker A: Which sounds like a genuine attempt to find out what you loved here.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: What chapter did that that teach you?

Speaker C: So basically that happened. So company I was with for three years and then I got headhunted to join another one. And I was with them for four years. And midway through, the chief executive changed and the new chief executive and I were just like chalk and cheese.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I, I knew I didn't have a long term future there. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about what do I want to do and what do I feel passionate about and where do I want to take my life? And I've always wanted to have my own business. What would it look like? And I spent a lot of time thinking and talking to friends and talking to family. And it boiled down to a choice of two things, either wine or music. And my then teenage daughter said, dad, you're too old for the music business, but wine would be perfect. So I went to night school for a year, did my wine trade qualifications, and when I was finally released from that second PLC role, when they'd found my successor, I walked out and I was still on payroll for another six months. So that was nice. And I said, right, I'm going to be a wine merchant. I had never worked in the wine industry before, but I love wine and I love learning about wine and I love talking about wine. And even more fun is tasting wine. And um, I thought, okay, well this will be great. And I know lots of people. You know, I've been the CFO of listed companies in the city for eight years. I know lots of people in the city who make lots of money. Of course they'll buy wine from me. And they didn't. Uh, uh, oh, and that was. Yeah, that was, that, that was the beginning of a, of a pretty dark period in, in my career where like, just literally having had a very successful corporate career, all of a sudden, my first solo venture was not very successful. And over a period of about 18 months, I burned through a hundred grand in savings. Um, um, thankfully I had it in savings, so I didn't go into debt. But yeah, ah, it was a dark period. Uh, uh, I was really in denial. I mean, within about three months of launching the wine business, the accountant in me realized that the profit margin I made from selling a case of wine wasn't worth the effort of selling it. And that was tough. And so I went into denial. And as Brene Brown talks about numbing, well, I was in the wine trade. So literally in the wine trade in London, you can go to a wine tasting every single day, you don't pay for it. You're invited in of course you're expected to spit it out, but you know, occasionally a little bit trickles down. Literally for, for 18 months, basically I was getting every day.

Speaker B: So what was the turning point that you thought right, what's it over the year you, you realized how much money you um, spent, or was it relatively a short period of time that your finances dwindled?

Speaker C: That, that happened over that 18 month period. And the turning point, the turning point was uh, just after my 50th birthday. So my, my parents came to London from Vancouver to be with us for the, for, for my birthday. And then they went back and three weeks later my dad had an accident. Mhm. Which he never recovered from.

Speaker A: Isn't it 2012? Yeah.

Speaker C: And so, so I flew back to Canada. Dad, um, was in intensive care. He never recovered from the accident. And I was there basically, you know, the whole, the six of us were there, plus some of the nieces and nephews, um, or I guess grandchildren from my parents perspective. We were all there and, and we just said, you know, dad would not want to be kept alive on machines. So we had them, um, take the machines out and, and he died. And I was there watching him die. And it was the most incredibly sad but also enlightening moment for me because it was the moment where I realized that there's more to us than just life and death and what we see. And, and, and it was really a spiritual awakening for me.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And it was the kick up the bum I needed to get my life back on track.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, you know, it shifted a huge part for you. Didn't was a lot of light bulb moments going off at the same time.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, it was a big pivotal moment and that's for sure. And that actually sort of changed the direction of where you were. Um, otherwise you would have probably been 200 grand down, you know, and then it would have been a lot of trouble. We would have been in trouble then. So whilst it was bittersweet, it actually then helped you in a way.

Speaker C: It did, yes. No. And I thank my dad regularly for it.

Speaker A: So he's proud of you now, that's for sure. He sure would be. Come on, you. You found key person of influence.

Speaker C: I did.

Speaker A: Met Daniel Priestley.

Speaker C: Yes, I did.

Speaker A: So how did that help you get your confidence back and shape what you do now, including things like the funding focus?

Speaker C: Yeah. So in two ways really. So number one, going through that key person of influence program, uh, was, it was, it was a game changer in terms of thinking, in terms of my awareness in terms of how to present myself to the marketplace. You know, the program's based around what they call the five Ps, which is pitch, publish, production, profile and partnerships. And I learned how to pitch my business much better because, like when I was trying to sell wine to people, I'd never sold anything before. I'm a finance guy, um, so I didn't really know how to pitch, but I learned how to pitch what I do publish. I ended up writing two books, and my first book is what led to the second book. And the female founders will come onto that and just. Yeah, just going through that program and working. There were about 50 of us on that cohort going through, and, you know, some of them are still very, very good friends to this day, 10 years later. So that itself was great. But the really pivotal change came when at the very end of the program, they don't do this anymore because this is all pre Covid and it all used to be live in person. But at the end of the program, the last day was something that they called pitch fest, where in the morning you deliver your 5 minute pitch to the other members of your cohort and they all vote. Uh, and the top 10 pitchers get invited to present to a live audience with judges in the evening. And I was one of the 10. And so I delivered my pitch and Daniel was one of the judges and he was really impressed with the pitch and gave me some tremendous feedback. And, um, about three weeks after this, he rang me up and said, just tell me a little bit more about this fund, acquire, consolidate, exit and how it works. Um, and he said, look, I've got two acquisitions where I've kind of agreed the terms with the companies, but we don't have anyone who can kind of help us get it through without engaging lawyers who are going to charge me an absolute fortune. Is that something you can help with? And I said, yes, absolutely. And we went in and within a month, we'd completed both acquisitions. And I was appointed as the chief financial officer of the key person of influence business. And that was the beginning of a journey where I'm doing everything. Well, not everything, but I'm now the CFO of all of Daniel's companies.

Speaker A: That's Dent Global.

Speaker C: So that's Dent Global. Well, it was RethinkPress. We just sold that one. It's a company called August Recognition. And then there are a number of spin up companies. Uh, there's ScoreApp, there's BookMagic, there's Awards App, and the latest one is called Vidinary. I also look after Dan's personal company. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker C: That's been a cool experience. And, um, Dan and I have become really, really good friends.

Speaker A: Well, he's a very cool guy.

Speaker B: Come on.

Speaker C: He is.

Speaker A: Well, uh, you are, too, but he is a cool guy.

Speaker C: He is a very cool guy.

Speaker A: Yeah. Which is amazing. And we met sitting, waiting, uh, at an awards dinner last third of December, last year. 2025. And that was for the Women's Business Club.

Speaker C: Correct.

Speaker A: And now you've just led us into a. Well, we had the secret, but now we've got the reality that you've actually acquired, with five other wonderful ladies, the Women's Business Club. You're now running that.

Speaker C: We are now running that, yeah. So the founder of the Women's Business Club had some health issues and had to stand down, and we approached her and agreed a deal and bought the business that completed, I think it was just before Christmas. And we're kind of revisiting everything in the club, looking at all the stuff we're rebuilding the website, we're looking at all the various programs that it offers, we're looking at building out training programs. A lot of the work that I do with female founders around fundraising. We're going to build that into a training program that they can do. And we're going to look to initially get the business really growing in the uk and then it has an international footprint, but we're going to focus on the UK for now, and then we're going to expand internationally.

Speaker B: David, you have an energy, right, that just seems to. It just. It just bounces. At the moment, we're all in our. Our little quarters, but you've got an energy that just bounces. Right. And everybody, I would imagine, that has met David, knows David and understands when I say about this energy, but you also have this ability to just, I wouldn't say land in your lap, but, you know, be in the place at the right time where significant opportunities happen. So this is a significant opportunity. So where did you go from seeing us round the table, um, you know, last December to then four months later owning. Owning that company?

Speaker A: How did that happen?

Speaker C: It was already in process when the discussions were already in process when we were sitting at that table.

Speaker B: Right. Okay, fair enough. Okay. I was just about to say I thought it happened when you walked off the stage with your, um, award in your hand and all of a sudden, here we are.

Speaker A: So I think that you'd been. I mean, the fact that you had been working with female founders and it was such a um, you know, they're so tied together, women having their own business, looking at funding or at least some startup support. All of that was, it's kind of all in the same arena. So you were close to the, uh, business community, the women's business club before?

Speaker C: Yes, I was. And this, all, this all kind of came about. So again, on the KPI program, the second P is published. And uh, in 2000 I published my first book called Add Ah, then Multiply, which is also the name of my business. And that's what sets out my whole fund. Acquire, consolidate, exit model. And once the book came out, I started getting invited to speak at events. And I was speaking at an event in Reading about fundraising for small businesses in the summer of 2019 and a woman came up to me after my talk and asked me why so little funding went to female founders. And I looked at her, I said, I have no idea, but I'll find out. And I was shocked by what I found out. You know, the level of funding in the UK and Europe of venture capital funding to female founders, all female teams, is less than 2%. Uh, mixed gender teams, it's around between 10 and 15%. And all male teams are getting north of 80% of all funding in the United States. It's never been more than 3%. And this data goes back 18 years to 2008. They've been tracking it since then and literally you look at the curve and it just goes like that. And there's been all sorts of initiatives and all sorts of things going on and the level of funding is not changing. So that led me to publish my second book, funded female founders, and to create a social, uh, enterprise called Funding Focus. And then in 2023, together with John, who was the chairman of the FTSE 100 company, who then became the founder of the publishing business, he approached me and he said, I've been looking at what you're doing. I think this sounds really amazing. Shall we try and go out and raise a fund that will invest in female founded businesses? And I said, yes, absolutely. And for a year John and I tried to raise a fund, uh, and we had big ambitions. Uh, it was going to be a listed fund on the stock exchange and we were going to raise £100 million so that we could really do something serious. But we couldn't get it away, we couldn't get the investment. We had a few people say, oh, it looks interesting. And we were talking to some big players. I mean, we pitched to Fidelity, to blackrock, to Schroeders, to Bank of New York and a handful of others. And they all said, this is great, this is really important, but they're not investing. Interesting. So, um, that was very frustrating. And so we kind of thought, okay, we've given it a good shot. Let's just leave that be. And then about a year later, I had an idea for something that was a smaller fund that was just going to be, um, like 5 million. But one of the difficulties that we discovered is that there is a horrible piece of legislation called the Alternative Investment Fund Management Directive, and it sets out rules around what are called pooled investment schemes. So where you go out and raise money from multiple people that, that you. You're pooling their investments into something, and if you do that, you have to comply with aifmd.

Speaker B: Uh, okay.

Speaker C: And it's a lot of bureaucracy and process, and, you know, you need to have custodians and you need to have administrators. It's just. It was a nightmare. We, we worked really hard to identify the bare minimum that it was going to cost, and it was about £700,000 a year.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And we went out, we thought, okay, well, let's raise five and let's get some. Because we had some good deals lined up ready to go, and we got pledges for about two. And, uh, we just thought, you know, the, the administrative expenses are going to eat up the money we've raised in three years, and we won't be able to invest anything. So we stop.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Oh, wow. So I don't know where it's going to go, but, you know, one day I hope to create a fund. One day I'd love to. What would be great. What would be great is if I could find a single benefactor who would be willing to back me in this. Because with a single benefactor, it's not a pooled investment fund, so I don't have to comply with aifmd. So somewhere out, uh, there in, in your. In your podcast verse, if there's someone who is interested in supporting female founders and has £5 million or more that they're willing to entrust to someone with a lot of experience who's done a lot of deals and is very committed to supporting female founders, then let's manifest them, shall we?

Speaker B: David's your man. We will manifest them. M. Definitely. There's no better energy. I was just going to ask you, what's your next big thing?

Speaker A: Well, we've got a lot of next big things. There's a lot on the agenda at the moment, for sure.

Speaker B: There is a great deal of. On the. Can I just ask you, though, I mean, what are you most proud of?

Speaker C: What am I most proud of? My family. My. My two daughters and my two grandkids.

Speaker B: No, no, no, that's. That's absolutely. It's a question I always ask, I must admit, in, In.

Speaker C: In the business world.

Speaker B: In the business world.

Speaker C: In the business world. I'm very proud of winning that Man M of the Year award.

Speaker A: Good.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: And I'm proud of that because it's a. It's a. It's a validation of the importance of the work I'm doing. It's. It's not about me, it's about trying to change. It gives me a bigger platform to try and get the message out about what needs to change. Because in 2019, Allison Rose, who used to be the chief executive of NatWest bank, was commissioned by the UK government to look into female entrepreneurship. And she did a huge, huge piece of research. Not just her, obviously, she had a big team, but she found that if women started businesses and were funded at the same level as men were, it would generate an incremental £250 billion to the UK economy. Oh, gosh, there goes Rachel Rees's problem.

Speaker A: It would be absolutely.

Speaker B: To you.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Come and listen to David, Rachel.

Speaker A: Yeah. And let's manifest this benefactor.

Speaker B: Yes, we definitely will. We definitely will. David, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. And thank you for sharing the reality as well as, as the wins as well. Because, you know, you had some big pivotal moments. You recognize them in yourself. You've changed it. And I think that that's absolutely. And it's, you know, for anybody out there listening, we do go through hard times, both personal, personal and professional. But, you know, there is, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And definitely you've actually, um, you've actually shown that that is the case. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. It's. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who'd enjoy it. We do need a manifestation in there somewhere and follow the show so that you don't miss the next conversation. And we'd love to hear what stood out for you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you, David.

Speaker D: Appreciate it.

Speaker C: Thank you very much. Really enjoyed it.

Speaker D: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. If you enjoyed this one, we would appreciate it if you could leave us a review as it helps others find the show. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to exploring more secrets of learning and development with you next time. Until then, keep learning and stay curious.