The super-connected personal fundraising agent
The room where women
founders stay
in power.
IRIS is a founder-led, non-profit network for women building and scaling companies. Every member who succeeds brings her knowledge, her connections, and her hard-won experience back into the room — raising the floor for every founder who comes after her.
- A network that opens doors — warm introductions, mentorship, co-working, and curated events
- IRIS AI — your free AI agent, always available to provide pitch feedback, strategic input, and direct connections
- Free for founders — our funding is transparent, aligned, and reinvested into the community
- Research backed — we track outcomes, publish results, and focus on what actually moves the needle
in the network — Day 1
all-female founding teams
because of this gap
Europe’s founder gender gap
About Iris
Founded by women founders.
Run for women founders.
IRIS was created because women founders kept hitting the same walls. Not because they lacked talent, but because the rooms where decisions are made were closed to them.
We believe the best way to change a system is to build a better one alongside it. A super-connector network where success is shared, knowledge flows back, and no founder has to build alone.
We are making it equal at the top. Women disproportionately face barriers to capital, networks, and power — not because of capability, but because the system was not built with them in mind.
She raised $5M for an AI company now on its Series A. She scaled the Cambridge Female Founder Network to 250+ members. Forbes named her one of the 30 most impactful people under 30 in Europe. Iris is the infrastructure she built because she needed it and it didn’t exist.
The problem
The gap is not a
talent problem.
It is a network problem.
In Europe right now, male founders outnumber female founders by up to 18 to 1. Not because fewer women are building. Because fewer women are connected to the rooms where capital, customers, and credibility are distributed.
Male founders inherit the warm introduction. Female founders have to earn access by luck — or build the infrastructure themselves. That is what Iris is.
No warm route to capital
The warm introduction is the most powerful currency in venture. It is almost exclusively traded inside networks that were not designed to include them — and 2% of European VC proves it.
No peer who has been there
Mentorship flows through alumni networks, accelerator cohorts, and boardrooms. All historically spaces female founders were not built into — and still underrepresented in today.
No legal support
Navigating term sheets, cap tables, and founder agreements without the right support puts founders at a structural disadvantage from the start.
No channel to corporates
Strategic partnerships and B2B sales are brokered through relationships. Without the right network, the best products never reach the buyers who need them most.
Why Iris
High-signal
by design.
Too many fundraising conversations start without enough fit, context, or trust. Iris is designed to improve the quality of connection from the start — reducing noise, sharpening relevance, and making introductions more meaningful on both sides.
Working for you while you sleep
Iris is not an agent you activate when you need something. She runs continuously — scanning investor deployment cycles, tracking backing patterns, mapping new connections as the network grows. By the time you ask for an introduction, Iris has often already identified the match.
Pitch intelligence trained on real investors
Before you walk into a meeting, Iris has already mapped how that investor type responds — their real objection patterns, their decision triggers, their blind spots. You arrive having already had the conversation once.
Introductions that land because they are earned
Every investor is verified by actual track record before any introduction is made. Every introduction is endorsed by a member. You are not sent into a room cold — you are sent in trusted, context-shared, pitch-ready.
You vet the investor before they vet you
Iris checks every investor's track record before making any introduction — who they have actually backed, at what stage, in which sectors. You walk into every meeting knowing exactly who you are talking to.
No gatekeepers
Access to the right investors has always depended on who you already know. Iris removes that dependency. The introduction is earned through fit and context — not proximity to the right person at the right school.
No success fee. Ever.
Iris does not take a cut of your round. When an introduction leads to investment, the return belongs entirely to you. We succeed when the network succeeds — not by taking a share of what you built.
Mentors matched by what they have lived, not where they live
Matched by sector, stage, fundraising history, and geography — to founders who navigated your exact challenge. Not the nearest person with an impressive title. The right person with the right experience.
Why it works
Not just a platform.
A system designed
to close rounds.
Most tools make introductions. Iris builds the conditions for them to succeed — before, during, and after the room. Backed by a live community of 250+ founders whose collective experience shapes how the system learns, who it matches, and what it knows.
Built on what founders actually say.
Every Iris recommendation is explainable and intentional — shaped directly by the experiences of our founder community. Not algorithmic guesswork. Pattern recognition built from real conversations, real outcomes, and the hard-won knowledge of founders who have been through the room before you.
Both sides arrive prepared.
Iris prepares founders and investors before they meet — the right timing, the right framing, the right context for that specific relationship. No cold meetings. No wasted conversations. Every introduction lands with the groundwork already in place.
We don’t just open the door.
Iris tracks what happens after the introduction — flagging the right moment to follow up, connecting founders to peer support and legal guidance when momentum stalls, and staying in the conversation until the outcome is reached.
The network gets smarter with every match.
Iris learns from every interaction — what signals a strong fit, which conversations convert, where founders needed more time. That intelligence compounds across the network, continuously improving matching accuracy. Each member makes it better for the next.
How Iris works
How Iris
works for you
around the clock.
Iris doesn’t wait to be asked.
She’s already working.
While you’re building, Iris is running — scanning backing patterns, tracking investor deployment cycles, mapping your profile against the network. By the time you need an introduction, the groundwork is already done. The conversation you’re about to see didn’t start when you sent a message. It started the moment you joined.
A conversation, not a form
Iris calls you. You have a conversation — your stage, your sector, your goals, and where you are stuck. Your profile is mapped to the full network. Then Iris gets to work.
And when the fit is right, the introduction moves.
Scroll to follow the conversation
Sign up and see how
Iris AI can work for you.
Two minutes to apply. Reviewed within a day. Free, always.
A public commitment
Female founders close their round.
By the end of 2027. Or we failed.
We are not trying to raise awareness. We are not running a programme. We are building the infrastructure to close rounds — and we are holding ourselves to a number. Fifty founders. Funded. By 31 December 2027. Every feature we ship, every investor we vet, every introduction we make, is accountable to this.
Built on a community of founders who have been where you are — and stayed to help the next one through.
Ready to join
Better connections
start with better
infrastructure.
Whether you are raising or investing, Iris brings the right people into the right conversations — with more trust, more context, and better fit.
1-minute application. Reviewed within a day. Free, always.
Apply in two minutes
No pitch deck. No essay questions. Just the basics.
Iris reviews and responds
Within a day. You’ll hear either way — always.
Your onboarding begins immediately
Iris calls you. Your profile is mapped to the full network. The first introductions follow within the week.
Investors & corporates
Select your role in the form and we will route your request to the right place.