Just over a year ago, we became the first VC in Europe to help pay for the childcare costs of our parent founders.
Childcare is often cited as one of the most significant barriers to parents’ – especially women’s – success in entrepreneurship. This initiative, in partnership with
@bubbleChildcare – an Ada portfolio company and the UK's leading on-demand childcare platform – was designed to alleviate this burden and demonstrate our support for the ‘whole founder’.
In the spirit of open-source learning and a commitment to encourage others to adopt a new approach, we wanted to share the details of how the first year has gone.
Key updates include:
👶 30% of eligible Ada Ventures founders have already used this childcare support
🤝 A further 19% plan to access this support in the near future
📈 192.25 hours of Ada-sponsored childcare have been claimed so far
We’re incredibly proud of these numbers, but even more so of the valuable testimonials we've received in recent months. Diarra Smith, Head of Portfolio and Brand at Ada, has written about the impact this support has had over on Medium – here’s a glimpse of what our founders had to say:
💬 “It’s made me more resilient. I know that if I can work around childcare and still attend meetings.” – @hannahsut13, Co-Founder & COO of
@themoonhub
💬 “My wife and I both work so one of us has to take care of the kids after work and during holiday time. The [founder/investor relationship] is like a business marriage. The investor needs to show that they care about other things going on in that founder's life.” –
@MarkWhitcroft, Founder of
@PlannerPalAI.
💬 “It has been heartening to see other venture firms pick up this lead set by Ada by offering childcare support to their portfolios. Once again, Ada has set in motion a welcome ripple effect to build for the future we want to see.” – Dr.
@juliafanli, Co-Founder & CEO of
@micrographiaBio.
To mark the anniversary of the scheme our very own
@checkwarner has also written for Forbes about why VC-backed childcare support is needed now more than ever.
Today’s update also coincides with the launch of @wvce_tech's report on ‘The Untold Stories of Mothers in VC.’ The report features some sobering statistics on women’s anxieties around motherhood in the venture capital industry, and serves as an important reminder that there’s still much work to be done across the board.
Read Check’s article here 👉
forbes.com/sites/checkwarner…
Read Diarra’s piece here 👉
diarrasmith.medium.com/16df5…
Check out WVC:E’s new report and their exclusive with
@Siftedeu 👇