From Failed Round to Supermarket Success - Julianne Ponan, Creative Nature

Fundraising Stories with Female Founders

Fundraising expert Julia Elliott Brown, the CEO of Enter The Arena talks with Julianne Ponan, Managing Director of superfood brand Creative Nature, a company that creates raw superfoods, snacks and food mixes suitable for everyone including those who are nutrition-conscious, vegans and those who live with a food allergy or intolerance.

Julianne started her career in investment banking and was shortly asked by her father, a businessman, to do due diligence on a company he’d invested in that was failing, Creative Nature. He asked if she was interested in taking over the business to try to turn it around.

She decided to turn it into a food brand due to her severe allergies to a large number of foods which had caused much distress over the years. Julianne first tried raising investment for the business and failed, unfortunately, so started growing the business organically and landed a contract with supermarket giant, Tesco. She appeared on Dragon’s Den, and ended up turning down investment from Deborah Meaden, a difficult decision to make. However, Julianne realised she was now confident in her mission and was ready to go out and seek investment through crowdfunding. Julianne raised over 500K, smashing her target of £350K.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• What to learn if you fail a funding round
• Why sometimes turning down investment is the right decision
• How to get over being scared of growing your business

For the full video interview, go to http://www.enterthearena.co.uk/Fundraising-Stories/