Jade Bentwood spent a decade advising high-net-worth women through divorces, exits and other upheavals. Then she went on maternity leave and found there wasn't the support in place for working women navigating life transitions.
So she started hosting other women at her house.
Together, they’d sit on the kitchen floor, holding their newborn babies on their laps, and talk more openly than they ever had in the office. The same thing came up every time. Nobody knew what came next, or who was going to help them work it out.
There was no blueprint, so she made the nearest thing to one: she matched the women in front of her with others from the same industry who had already been through it. That became TALO, a mentoring platform for women going through life and career transitions. We spoke about what it took to build it.
What we discussed
Why mentoring works where traditional coaching often doesn’t, and what women need when navigating career transitions.
What a useful support ecosystem for female founders looks like in the UK.
How going to market before the product was perfect led to some of her best clients, and why the best cash comes from your customer.
What the romanticised version of founder life leaves out when you’re a mother of two young children.
Lessons for policymakers
Make paternity leave long enough and paid well enough to be worth taking. Fathers get two weeks, paid at the statutory rate, and the framing is that they are helping out at home. Jade argues men who take real time out come back as better leaders, with a clearer sense of what their female colleagues are dealing with — and that until the entitlement is substantial and properly paid in its own right, few will take it.
Direct dedicated equity funding to female-led businesses. Women building credible, scalable companies aren’t reaching capital at the same rate as men. Jade wants funding structured specifically to reach them, and more women in the roles that decide where it goes.
Shift more public sector procurement to SMEs. Jade acknowledges this isn’t gender-specific. But a public sector contract can transform an early-stage business, giving it stable revenue that takes the pressure off raising before you’re ready.
Lessons for founders
Start before you’re ready. Talk to your customers before anything is polished, even before you have all the answers. The gap between what you think you’re solving and what people actually need only closes through real conversations, and from Jade’s experience, the earliest ones are often the most valuable.
Build an informal board before you build a team. Identify people who are invested in the mission and tap into their knowledge in a structured way. People are generous with their time when they believe in what you’re building, and that can carry you further than any formal structure.
Find your tribe, carefully. Not every network delivers, but for Jade, the right community is one that leaves you feeling energised and with something tangible. Look for founders a little further ahead, willing to share the real vulnerabilities alongside the practical advice.
The founding story
You spent a decade in professional services before founding TALO — a mentoring platform supporting women through transitions such as fertility, maternity, leadership and menopause. What was the journey from there to here, and where is TALO now?
I worked in investment management for 10 years, running a women’s division that looked after high-net-worth women going through life transitions such as divorces, successful exits and professionals looking to be more strategic with their wealth. I really loved it. I loved the helping people part, the opportunity to engage with such a diverse mix of incredible women, and how we could empower them through knowledge. It felt like a business within the business.
I then went on maternity leave with my first child and found that transition quite hard from a professional standpoint. A lot of my identity was wrapped up in work, and being off and detached from that, I found it very difficult. I felt quite isolated, from the business I'd grown and built, and I thought to myself, I cannot be the only woman feeling like this.
So I started having events at my house with big groups of women, mostly from professional services, sitting on the kitchen floor with babies on laps, talking really vulnerably and openly about what they were feeling and what their companies were doing to support them.
I looked around at these amazing, highly capable women who were all saying the same thing: they weren’t sure how they were going to make it work, they were thinking about not going back, they couldn’t see the blueprint. There weren’t enough women they could talk to about it.
I thought, this is such a waste of talent. These women had worked in their industries for 10+ years and were all future leaders. So I started matching them to mentors, including other women from the same industry who had lived that experience and could give real, practical guidance. The feedback was amazing, and not just for the mentees, but for the mentors too.
Why do women going through these transitions need peer support specifically — what is it that a mentor who’s been there can offer that conventional support can’t?
I did a huge amount of research while we were building the business, and what I realised was that a lot of the coaching platforms out there weren’t working.
What women need in those very vulnerable moments when they are navigating something quite raw is lived experience from someone that they genuinely relate to because they have walked in their shoes. They want to be told what worked for that individual, so they can then take the bits that feel relevant and authentic to them and use them for their own journey.
We get feedback over and over again, and it’s always consistent. A mentor has to be someone who isn’t in your business, because there is a psychological barrier to how open and vulnerable you’re going to be because of the optics of how that might look internally.
So giving women the space to share, while hearing from someone they really admire and respect, gives them the validation and the permission to say, actually, I need your help, I need your guidance.
That practical side allows them to have tangible things to do tomorrow. In these pivotal transition moments, the practical side and the relatability are the bits that people take so much value from.
Building TALO
What’s one decision that you can now see was disproportionately important, but wouldn’t make most people’s list of obvious founder advice?
I was a solo founder, and I came from an environment where I got a lot of my energy from other people. I enjoy
that back and forth and being able to bounce ideas off someone. But when you’re a founder in the early days, you really don’t have that. It is very much you in your mind, trying to make sense and prioritise what you think is the most urgent thing that day, which can be quite a lonely place.
People talk about founder loneliness all the time, but for me, the answer wasn’t just putting myself in a co-working space around other founders. What I needed was people who were hugely invested in my success — who wanted to see this grow because they cared about the mission — and who I could talk to when I needed to.
So rather than overcomplicating it with a formal board of advisers, I assembled an informal one — people who cared about what we were doing, whose knowledge I could tap into when I needed it.
I found that to be really transformational because it allowed me to feel like I had a team, and a really experienced team at that. I was blown away by how generous people are with their time when they’re invested in you and the problem you’re trying to solve.
You went out and started building client relationships before the platform was fully ready, and some of those became your best clients. What gave you the confidence to do that, and what did you learn from those early conversations?
My confidence came from having spent a long time in professional services. I understood the challenges our clients were facing and had established relationships with businesses that trusted me and knew how I worked.
That meant I could have honest conversations early on — testing the idea, listening to what clients actually needed and shaping the solution around that feedback. You need those early clients who understand the problem and are willing to take a chance on you before everything is perfect.
I’d also lived the problem first-hand, so I had real conviction in the impact of what we were building. Those early conversations confirmed that this wasn’t just my experience — businesses were seeing the same challenges across their organisations, which showed me we were solving a genuine need.
You’ve built without external funding and are now scaling with employer clients. How did that shape the way you’ve built?
The best cash is the cash from your customer. That phrase has really stayed with me. In the early days, I was able to build TALO, generate revenue and prove there was demand without significant overheads or the need to raise external capital. So for me, it made sense to stay focused on customers and build from there.
The mission has always been about unlocking female potential. The quality of the match and the impact we can have on a mentee’s experience of work is what helps women stay, progress and thrive.
Initially, not raising was a deliberate choice. Then it became a question of: how far can we take this by listening to our clients, generating our own revenue and growing sustainably? So far, that approach has shaped the business we’ve built.
The ecosystem
We hear the “only about 2% of VC funding goes to women” statistic a lot. What have you seen work, for yourself and others, when it comes to finding the right support as a female founder?
I can’t speak from my own fundraising experience because I haven’t taken that route, but I’ve seen female founders around me take very different paths — from angel investment and SEIS/EIS to bootstrapping and VC. The funding statistics for women are still awful and absolutely need to change, but there are opportunities; the challenge is understanding which route is right for you and how to access it.
More broadly, I think you have to find your tribe. The right networks and communities are the ones you leave with something tangible — an introduction, a piece of advice, a different perspective — and feeling energised rather than overwhelmed.
For me, the most valuable support has come from a small, informal board of people I trust, particularly founders who are just a few steps ahead. They’re close enough to the journey to remember the reality of it, share the vulnerabilities as well as the successes, and give practical advice I can actually use.
What does a genuinely useful support ecosystem look like to you?
For me, a genuinely useful support ecosystem has a mix of experience, seniority, backgrounds and perspectives. Different people bring different things — advice, experience, introductions, funding or simply a perspective you haven’t considered — and you need that diversity around you.
It also can’t just be women supporting women. Men need to be part of the conversation too. The same applies to investment panels: having a mix of perspectives around the table leads to better conversations and better decisions.
Ultimately, it’s about creating an ecosystem where people are genuinely open to learning from each other, sharing what they know and, importantly, opening doors for others.
Founder life gets romanticised a lot. What’s the part nobody talks about?
There are a few things. I completely underestimated how much losing a consistent salary would affect me. I came from a stable corporate career, and while that financial pressure creates fire, losing the independence and security of your own income is a real adjustment.
Then there’s the reality of not having a team around you, particularly in the early days. You’re making the big strategic decisions, but you’re also doing the tiny operational things that nobody sees. And there’s no real ‘off’. The business is always there in your head — what you need to do, what isn’t working, where the next client is coming from.
I also don’t think we talk enough about comparison. You’re constantly exposed to other founders announcing funding rounds, new hires, huge growth or big client wins, and it’s very easy to feel like you should be further ahead.
For me, building a business alongside being a mum to two young children has also meant I’ve had to accept that growth isn’t linear.
It’s been important for me to not measure my journey against somebody else’s and focus on building the business in a way that actually works for my life.
Policy
If you could change one thing about the environment for high-potential female founders in the UK, what would it be and why?
I’d change the way we think about paternity leave and, more broadly, the role of fathers in those early years.
At the moment, paternity leave is often framed as a man taking time away from work to ‘support’ his partner. I think we need to completely reframe that.
There’s a wider impact too. When men take meaningful parental leave, they return to work with a much deeper understanding of the pressures their female colleagues and partners are navigating. It can shift priorities, build empathy and ultimately make them better leaders.
Most importantly, it starts to remove the assumption that having children is primarily a woman’s career event. If we want more high-potential women to build businesses, progress into leadership and fulfil their potential, we have to create an environment where parenting — and the career impact that comes with it — is genuinely shared.
On funding specifically, where would you want policymakers to actually start?
In general, move more public sector procurement to SMEs. It isn’t gender-specific, but it would help every smaller business.
If we’re talking about something more targeted, I’d say dedicated equity funding for female-led businesses: actual capital, structured to reach women who are building credible, scalable businesses but aren’t accessing the funding their male counterparts are.
The data on the funding gap is stark. We need policy change, and more women in the roles that decide where funding goes.
Closing and Advice
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a founder just starting — the kind you wish someone had given you?
Go all in. The moment I fully committed to TALO properly, everything changed. But alongside that, I’d say talk to your customers as early as possible, before you’ve built anything polished, and before you have all the answers.
The temptation is to perfect the proposition first and then validate it. I realised early on there’s often a gap between what you think you’re solving and what people actually need. You can only get that clarity and feedback by talking to your customers.
I do this regularly, and it always gives me new ways to improve and shape what we’re building.
What’s one thing you’ve read, listened to or come across recently that you’d recommend to readers?
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. It sounds flippant, but it’s genuinely one of the most useful things I’ve read as a founder. The central argument is that you have a finite amount of energy and attention, and the skill is choosing ruthlessly what deserves it.
As a mother and founder with multiple plates spinning, you cannot care about everything. This book helps look at what actually matters. For me, it’s been a practical tool as much as a philosophical one. It’s shaped how I make decisions, how I protect my time and stay focused on my goals.
This series is run in partnership with the Jessica Vollman Foundation, a non-profit founded to honour the legacy of the late CEO, founder and advocate for women in entrepreneurship: Jessica Vollman.