Meet The July Pitch Night Founders

This is why we are holding the second installment of our quarterly Pitch Nights, which provide entrepreneurial talent the opportunity to present their businesses to a room full of fellow founders, and some of the UK’s leading VC and Angel Investors.

Our June Pitch Night will see six female-founded and co-founded start-ups pitch their business in industries from social impact and sustainability to creative management.

Ariana Sefre
Founder and Co-CEO at Spoke

Ariana Sefre is an activist and entrepreneur on a mission to make “mental well-being tools more accessible for the millions underserved by more traditional or clinical practices.” Before Founding Spoke, Sefre was a scholar in Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge.

Spoke is the UK’s leading music-based mental well-being app. Created at the company's own East London-based studio, Scope provides “soothing episodes” which feature music and spoken word by some of the UK’s best producers and rising artists. Each installment is a meditation created for music lovers seeking to improve their mental and emotional health. Each episode unlocks countless more to help you upskill on a personal journey, backed by the science of mindfulness and therapy techniques.

Lydia Hartley Founder of Don’t Shop Swap

In 2019, Harltey moved to London to start a post-grad job in the tech industry. Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of clothes she had amassed and a lack of money in her wallet, she felt the pressure to keep up with fashion trends but didn’t want to contribute to fast fashion's effects on the planet.

This is when the idea for Don’t Shop Swap began, beginning its life as a clothes-swapping event where fashion-conscious Gen Z’s could swap their unwanted items for tokens. Today, the principle is the same, swapping clothes, for “coins” which allows users to buy the clothes of follower swappers.

Isabella Sumner Co-Founder of InHaus

Sumner began her career as a fashion stylist and international fashion photographer. Joining forces with Till Janz, an established fashion photographer working internationally on campaigns with global brands. Both recognising that Product videos dramatically increase conversion rates and reduce returns. Creating a quick turnaround bespoke content creation Ai studio.

Sumner is recognised as one of the Telegraph x Natwest 100 most exciting female entrepreneurs, She has had a career focused on client management, relationship building, and team leadership and is looking forward to scaling the InHaus brand and our partnerships.

Riham Satti MeVitae

‘Building the workforce of tomorrow, today,” is the offering of startup MeVitae. Working to help companies understand their current workforces and leverage data-driven technology to attract, screen, and retain top talent; ensuring companies build diverse and productive teams most fairly.

Founder, Riham Satti, completed a degree at Oxford University, with experience in academia paired with an extensive understanding of the tech-start up ecosystem. Being a neuroscientist provides a fresh perspective into the science of HR and people, with her aim to improve decision-making capacities.

Sharmadean Reid Founder of The Stack World

Sharmadean Reid is the Founder of The Stack World a global community of thousands of mission driven women. Who’s life’s work lies in gender equity. The Stack World is a company for ambitious mission driven women, that creates engaging editorial media on business, culture and society. The Stack World also hosts compelling events to create a forum for change with a Members App to connect member to member.

Sharmadean Reid graduated from Central St Martins with a First Class degree in Communication and became a brand consultant and fashion stylist for Nike, Asos and Arena Homme +.  She started WAH as a hip hop magazine for girls in 2006 while still at university. She then founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009.

WAH completely changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. She then wrote two books, delivered global pop up nail salons for 100s of brands, created a product line with Walgreen Boots Alliance and was awarded an MBE from HRH Queen in 2015 for services to Beauty and Women. The Stack World launched in 2021 and has grown to more than 14,000 women across the globe.

This is the second intallemnt of The Stack World Pitch Night of 2023, with future dates in, September and November. The evening is sponsored by Trip Drinks, NICE drinks and Huckletree.