CFFN started the way most meaningful things do: with a handful of people in a room who wanted something better to exist.

 

In early 2024, after an event celebrating female founders in Cambridge drew just five attendees, three founders: Xann Schwinn, Maya Gavin, and Kellyann Ripnar, decided to do something more meaningful for their community. In May 2024 Maya hosted a dinner for female founders in Cambridge, Xann hosted one in London. Then together they organised a Women in Innovation Showcase at Cambridge Judge Business School in June, followed by a dinner mixing founders and mentors from across the ecosystem.

 

The response was palpable. The energy around those tables made it clear: women in Cambridge wanted more spaces to be seen, heard, and supported - and there were just as many that wanted to support these founders. There was an opportunity to build something that sat at the intersection of these two groups to meld them into 1 super group, and one that centred on meaningful connections and support.

 

What started as informal dinners quickly became something bigger. Later that year, more voices joined the conversation - female founders: Clarisse Beurrier, Shazia Hayatt, and Lluna Gallego; and strategic advisors: David Cleevely, Matthew Cleevely, James Thomas, and Carrie Baptist came to the table to help shape what the network could become.

 

Xann and Maya kept hosting: dinners, panels, pitch nights - any opportunity to bring founders and their supporters together. Each event tested an idea. Each conversation refined the model.

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By June 2025, CFFN had formalised. By the end of the year, the network had hosted 52 events and welcomed 215 female founder members.

 

Those who contributed to CFFN's founding, through strategic counsel, operational support, or helping to shape the early vision, are recognised as Inaugural Members. They believed in this mission from the beginning and helped bring it to life. The network exists because they made space for it to grow.