Emma has recently secured an equity investment of £30k from Baltic Ventures’ angel syndicate and secured a place on our annual flagship Accelerator 2024 programme. Dearbump was chosen from an application pool of 270+ founders from across the UK and internationally.
With a background in product and tech, Emma created the digital midwife platform Dearbump to support women throughout pregnancy. After experiencing a traumatic birth, Emma established Dearbump to provide accessible maternity support, leading to the development of a digital midwife app that offers real-time data tracking and direct access to expert midwives.
Shortly after winning a place on Baltic Ventures’ accelerator programme, Emma took to the stage at the sold-out Slush’d event and conference in Liverpool to officially announce the launch of her new app.
“Although I have been running dearbump for a few years now, I saw a huge opportunity when I implemented access to live midwife chat on the website and to our corporate clients through our employee benefit service,” she said. “The feedback I have had from thousands of women across 30 countries made me realise that there was a huge gap in the market for real time access to trusted midwives.”
Emma had built a loyal and attentive social media following for her impact in the worlds of femtech, entrepreneurship and maternal health. But the founder was recently catapulted even further into the spotlight after using her voice to speak out about 25 female founders in the UK being denied approximately £2 million of funding.
More than 1,400 women applied for the Women in Innovation award, which ultimately only awarded funding to 25 projects instead of the full 50 that was initially pledged.
“I decided to post about this on my LinkedIn and urged other founders to speak up,”Emma says. “My post resonated with thousands of people including journalists, political leaders and innovators.”
Emma was contacted by journalists from publications including City AM, The BBC and The Telegraph and by the following Monday, the story had become national news. The issue was subsequently discussed in the House of Commons by Science, Innovation and Tech Secretary Peter Kyle. This quickly resulted in InnovateUK reversing their decision and awarding the remaining £1.87m to an additional 25 female-founded businesses.
“I was honestly so happy, overwhelmed and relieved,” Emma says. “The fact that it happened so quickly and ended up in parliament after only 4 days was unexpected (although it was a very intense 4 days), not to mention the overwhelming support we received from both women and men.
“The number of women who joined the movement was inspiring, but it was also great to see men actively participating and advocating for the cause.”
The campaign also opened up new opportunities for Dearbump, including partnerships and coveted media coverage in outlets including Forbes and Sifted. Most importantly, it was a reminder of the importance of collective action and creating change by speaking out about injustices.
What’s next for Dearbump? Emma is currently in the process of raising a seed funding round to “help us grow and scale”.
“Obviously being on the Baltic ventures accelerator is very exciting and is giving us lots of amazing exposure and opportunities,” she said. “One of our key focuses is growing the team. We have some exciting opportunities in front of us and will be forming new partnerships that will allow us to reach more expectant parents.
“We are also continuing to work with our corporate clients and will be offering our app to businesses to support their employees. It’s an exciting time for Dearbump, and I’m really looking forward to the next phase of growth.”