4 days ago

You Can't Be What You Can't See: Mex Ibrahim on Women, Food and the Funding Gap

Why are so few of the FTSE 100 led by women? If you asked a young person on the street to name a famous businesswoman, would they struggle? And if you're building a food business without a financial safety net behind you, would you expect to receive investment — not because you've been turned down, but because somewhere along the way you absorbed the idea that it simply wasn't an option for someone like you. Mex Ibrahim has spent years trying to change all that — and she's blunt about why it's still so hard.

Mex is co-founder of Women in the Food Industry, a UK-based non-profit community connecting women across all food verticals — from hospitality to farming, from food production to writing. She shares what she thinks is holding women back in food, explains why the funding gap for female founders isn't improving, why 'bootstrapping' is often something of a myth, as well as how and why women approach building food businesses differently. 

Listen to the interview to find out:

  • What Women in the Food Industry does and why it spans all food roles and verticals
  • The 'bootstrapping' myth
  • The gap that disproportionately affects women - but nobody ever talks about 
  • How women and men approach food entrepreneurship differently
  • The class-coded psychology of asking for investment

Links, Resources and Book Recommendations

Chapters

0:01:06 — What is Women in the Food Industry?

0:03:01 — Why span all food verticals?

0:05:16 — Evolution & geographic expansion

0:07:03 — "You can't be what you can't see"

0:10:22 — Class, privilege & the bootstrapping myth

0:14:32 — How women approach food business differently

0:19:08 — Where female founders trip up

0:21:43 — The funding gap

0:24:08 — The other gap nobody talks about

0:26:33 — 3–5 year vision for Women in the Food Industry

0:30:38 — Productivity & AI tools

0:33:29 — Book recommendations

 

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