Women Founding Differently: Ambition on Your Own Terms

An honest conversation about ambition, growth and building a business on your own terms.

What to expect

Women Founding Differently is back.

Following last year’s sell-out event, Patch Twickenham and local leadership coach Kate Rainford-Foakes are bringing together another brilliant panel of female founders for an honest conversation about what it really takes to start, build and grow a business.

This year, we’re exploring Ambition on Your Own Terms.

Because ambition doesn’t have to mean building the biggest company, working the longest hours or following the traditional start-up playbook. For some women, success means scaling a team or reaching the next revenue milestone. For others, it means greater freedom, meaningful work, financial independence or building something that fits alongside the rest of their life.

And for many of us, what we want from our businesses changes as we do.

What’s the event?

Ambition on Your Own Terms: Women Founding Differently is a morning of honest conversation, practical insight and connection for women who are building a business, thinking about starting one, or figuring out what they want their next stage to look like.

Our panel of female founders will share the reality behind their businesses: how they got started, the choices and trade-offs they’ve made along the way, what growth looks like for them, the things that haven’t gone to plan and how their definition of success has evolved.

We’ll get beyond the polished founder stories to talk about some of the questions women in business are actually grappling with.

How ambitious do you want to be? Do you need to scale? When is it time to hire or ask for help? How do you make a business work financially? What are you prepared to sacrifice for growth – and what are you absolutely not prepared to sacrifice? And how do you build something successful without automatically adopting somebody else’s definition of success?

Expect a friendly, energising morning where people can be candid about what’s working, what isn’t and what they’re still figuring out.

We’ll begin with a 45-minute panel conversation and quick-fire Q&A, before breaking into smaller groups for guided discussions where you can explore some of the themes for yourself and learn from other women in the room.

We’ll finish with relaxed networking over coffee – a chance to make new connections, swap ideas and perhaps find some of the support you need for whatever comes next.

Event details

Date and time: Friday 6 November 2026, 10am–12pm

Venue: Patch Twickenham, 42 York Street, TW1 3LJ

Accessibility: Step-free access with accessible entrance on Arragon Road

Parking: Public car parks nearby including Arragon Road Multi-Storey, York House and Church Lane

Transport: Five-minute walk from Twickenham station

Check-in: At the front desk on arrival

Who’s the event for?

Women Founding Differently is for women at every stage of entrepreneurship – whether you have an idea you haven’t quite acted on yet, have recently started something, or are several years in and thinking about what growth and success mean for you now.

You absolutely do not need to think of yourself as a stereotypical “entrepreneur”.

You might be building a business around children or caring responsibilities, starting again after a career change, growing a side project into something more substantial, or running an established business and questioning what you want its next chapter to look like.

What connects the room is a desire to build something meaningful without assuming there is only one right way to do it.

Children are welcome, and Patch will provide toys and colouring so that having little ones with you doesn’t have to stop you joining the conversation.