Business angels are coming to the rescue of start-up businesses across the UK - providing their expertise and very important funding.
But there is no doubt female business angels and women-owned businesses are under-represented.
That could now change.
Pat Sutton, operations director of Advantage Business Angels, has developed one of the UK's first investment clubs dedicated to the investment requirements of Women Business Angels.
"The Women Business Angels Investment Club meets the need for female business angels and high-growth businesses to come together to secure investment," she says.
"As an entrepreneur or an angel you will also benefit from our involvement with Advantage Business Angels and exposure to our enormous database of men and women-owned businesses and business angels."
She developed the network after ABA's first female angel said she was operating in a somewhat macho arena.
"When she joined Advantage Business Angels, she was our only woman investor and mentioned many times that she felt that she was in a man's world or an old boy network," says Pat.
"I have set about changing that, not just for her but for all those women who have gained knowledge, expertise and money and have something to give and often much to gain by investing in a budding entrepreneur."
Pat has since found female business owners with exciting high growth firms in need of development funding and some that have specifically sought someone who will appreciate the female market.
"The businesses can often be female-friendly sectors like health, fashion or cosmetics but we also have women angels in manufacturing, engineering, telecoms, IT and many other sectors."
It has already met with some early success, with one of its female business angels increasing her portfolio by investing in an holistic health company, (owned by a woman) and then a logistics company, (a man-woman partnership).
"This gives women the best of both worlds - access into the best of the male and female worlds," says Pat.
"As Beatrice Jauffrineau, the founder of Femme Business Angels, the only business angels network in France specifically for women, said to me - to be a business angel you don't have to be a man in retirement with several million on the side, you can be an experienced woman who is ready to invest her expertise as well as her money."
