Female Founders Scaleup Growth: KPMG and Grow London
- Laura Derbyshire
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Leadership looks very different when you’re actually building something.
Last week, OSER attended a Female Founders leadership breakfast hosted by Grow London and KPMG UK, as part of KPMG’s Emerging Giants scaleup programme - an initiative designed to support some of the UK’s most ambitious, high-growth businesses as they move from momentum to meaningful scale.
The room brought together women entrepreneurs, founders, and scaleup leaders navigating the messy middle of growth - where leadership, structure, and strategy start to matter more than hustle alone.
The conversation wasn’t about leadership trends or buzzwords. It was about what really changes when a business starts to scale, and what female founders are learning first-hand as they grow high-potential companies in the UK.
Female Founders Are Redefining Leadership
One of the strongest themes of the morning was authenticity in leadership.
Female founders are not following traditional leadership models - they are actively reshaping them. Rather than trying to lead “like someone else,” the message was clear:
Don’t feel you need to be a leader in a certain way. Be the leader you want to be.
This shift is particularly relevant for scaleups within programmes like KPMG Emerging Giants, where businesses are moving fast, teams are expanding, and leadership styles must evolve alongside growth.
As complexity increases, leadership stops being about individual brilliance and becomes about clarity, alignment, and decision-making under pressure — areas where strategic brand and leadership alignment become critical.
The Founder as the Glue Between Team and Market
A key insight shared during the fireside chat and echoed repeatedly in the room was the evolving role of the founder or CEO.
In early-stage startups, founders are everywhere: product, sales, marketing, hiring, fundraising. But as businesses scale particularly into Emerging Giants territory, the founder’s role changes.
At scale, founders become the glue:
Between the strongest people in the organisation
And the market, customers, and commercial reality
This is where leadership becomes structural. Growth depends on bringing in strong, aligned senior managers who can operate autonomously while staying connected to the company’s mission and market position.
Many scaleup founders reach this point without senior marketing or growth leadership in place, which is why scaleups increasingly use fractional CMO support to bridge strategy, execution, and leadership without over-hiring.
Alignment Beats Talent in High-Growth Teams
Another recurring theme was team alignment.
High-growth companies don’t fail because they lack talent. They struggle because teams are pulling in different directions, and this is something that becomes increasingly visible as headcount, markets, and revenue grow.
The most successful founders are intentional about:
Hiring people motivated by the same outcomes
Aligning teams around what the business is actually trying to achieve
Making strategy visible and repeatable as the company scales
This is where growth strategy workshops and leadership alignment sessions play a critical role — helping scaleups stay focused as complexity increases.
Choose a Problem You Actually Want to Solve
One of the most practical leadership lessons shared was this:
If you want long-term commercial success, choose a problem you genuinely enjoy solving.
Scaling a business amplifies everything, including frustration. Founders who choose markets or problems purely for commercial logic often struggle when momentum dips. Enjoyment isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s a resilience strategy.
For scaleups in programmes like KPMG Emerging Giants, this clarity becomes even more critical; growth brings scrutiny, pressure, and expectation. This is also where brand clarity becomes a growth lever, defining not just what you sell, but why your business exists and who it is really for.
Why the UK Needs a Healthier Relationship with Failure
A frank discussion emerged around failure in the UK startup ecosystem.
Compared to the US, the UK still treats failure as something to move past rather than learn from openly and quietly. The reality is simpler and more useful:
Failure happens. The world keeps spinning. You learn, adapt, and start again.
For founders building high-growth businesses, this mindset unlocks bolder decisions in marketing, experimentation, and AI-led growth, where iteration is essential for scale.
Leadership Lessons for Female Founders and Scaleups
The conversations at KPMG and Grow London reinforced several leadership truths OSER sees repeatedly when working with founders, CEOs, and leadership teams, particularly those entering scaleup and Emerging Giants phases:
Leadership evolves with scale - structure matters as much as vision
Strong managers are a growth accelerator, not a loss of control
Alignment drives performance more reliably than raw talent
Enjoyment and purpose underpin sustainable commercial success
Failure is not a weakness - it’s data
Founders who navigate this phase successfully tend to invest early in strategic clarity, brand alignment, and senior marketing leadership, rather than treating marketing as a downstream activity.
Moving the UK Scaleup Ecosystem Forward
A huge credit to Grow London, KPMG UK, and the KPMG Emerging Giants scaleup programme for creating space for honest, practical leadership conversations and to Janet Coyle CBE, Managing Director, Grow London, London & Partners, Anna Purchas, Vice Chair & London Office Senior Partner at KPMG UK and Olga Kotsur, Serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder at Mercaux, for sharing real-world insight from inside high-growth businesses.
Most importantly, thank you to the female founders in the room who spoke openly about scaling teams, leading under pressure, and staying authentic as the stakes get higher.
These are the conversations the UK’s scaleup ecosystem needs more of: grounded, practical, and focused on what actually drives growth.
About OSER
OSER partners with founders, CEOs, and leadership teams at the scale-up stage to build brands, marketing strategies, and growth systems designed for scale.
Our work spans brand strategy, fractional CMO leadership, AI-enabled marketing, and growth workshops - supporting ambitious businesses as they move from momentum to maturity.
Comments