Dear Female Founder by Lu Li, published in 2016 by Blooming Founders, is a collection of letters written by women entrepreneurs and investors to the women who come after them. Li, who founded the London platform Blooming Founders to support women building companies, asked each contributor one question: what advice do you wish someone had given you when you started? The book gathers 66 answers in letter form.
What is Dear Female Founder about?
The book rests on a simple belief: women founders lack access to the informal advice that flows freely in male-dominated networks, so the fix is to write that advice down and hand it over. Each letter is short, personal and addressed directly to the reader. Some contributors are well known in tech and media, others run quieter businesses, and they come from many countries and sectors.
There is no single argument or method. The letters cover the whole arc of a company, from doubting the first idea to hiring, fundraising, growing abroad and dealing with failure. Recurring themes appear across very different voices: self-doubt, the value of asking, the pain of a bad co-founder split, the strain on family life and the relief of finding peers. The author’s framing ties the collection together, and the subtitle refers to the combined revenue of the contributors’ companies by the author’s count.
What sets it apart is the format. A letter from a founder to a stranger is more candid than a business chapter, and the variety means you meet a dozen different ways to build a company. Reading it feels like sitting at a long dinner table with people who have done it, each taking a turn to tell you what really mattered.
What are the main lessons for founders?
- Act before you feel qualified. Many contributors describe waiting too long for permission. Set a launch date for a small version of your idea and keep it.
- Make direct asks. Introductions, advice, customers and investment rarely arrive unprompted. Practise asking in clear, concrete terms, and get used to hearing no.
- Pick partners with care. Several letters describe co-founder and investor relationships that went wrong. Talk about roles, equity and exit wishes before you sign anything.
- Guard your energy. Founders write openly about exhaustion and its cost to health and family. Build rest into your week as a business decision.
- Find your peers. A group of other women founders shows up again and again as the thing that kept people going. Join or start one this month.
Who should read Dear Female Founder?
It fits women in the first one or two years of a company, when doubt is high and support is thin. It also suits women in corporate jobs who are considering the jump, and mentors who want stories to pass on. Because each letter stands alone, it works well for busy founders who read in five minute gaps.
Skip it if you want a step-by-step manual. Founders looking for detailed help with fundraising terms, sales processes or product development will find the advice too broad.
How do you put Dear Female Founder to work this week?
- Read ten letters and mark the one piece of advice that hits hardest. Write down one action it implies for your business and do it by Friday.
- Write your own one-page letter to yourself one year from now: what you expect to have learned and what you hope you did not avoid.
- Send three direct asks you have been putting off: an introduction, a customer meeting and a request for feedback.
If you want a structured way to turn the advice into weekly practice, the Fe/male Switch startup game lets you build a company step by step with an AI co-founder.
Where does Dear Female Founder fall short?
A book of 66 short letters repeats itself. The same advice about confidence and asking for help appears many times, and the quality varies from letter to letter. The format also leaves no room for depth: you read what a founder learned, rarely how she applied it in numbers, deals or decisions. Published in 2016, some references to funding and tech feel dated. For a structured walk through building and funding a high-growth company, the Female Founders’ Playbook fills that gap.