Interview: Kylie Reid, founder of Edinburgh-based, female-fostering network Egg that is looking to crack the UK market

Venture founded in Scottish capital to connect women now targeting UK growth.

Kylie Reid in 2017 founded Edinburgh Gossip Girls (now abbreviated to Egg) after moving to the city from Glasgow and seeking contacts and recommendations as a new mother. It says it is now Scotland’s largest platform connecting, supporting, and celebrating women, linking more than 100,000 via its social platforms and channels alone, for example.

And the entrepreneur details how her emotions were running high last month at a major event it was hosting at The Balmoral hotel in the Scottish capital. The first in the Women on Top series of such sessions by Egg, and taking place the day before International Women’s Day (IWD), it saw a 150-strong audience of women “and some men” hear from pioneering businesswomen including Grace Andrews, marketing director for Steven Bartlett and the Diary of a CEO podcast, and Sonja Mitchell, MD of Jump Ship Brewing.

“I think I'm still on a high, actually,” says Reid, also stressing that bringing the event to life was a team effort. “It was inclusive. We were kind and caring, compassionate, but inspirational – I think you can be all those things at once”. Bagpiper Louise Marshall helped bring proceedings to life, with Reid laughing that it was “as if we were all about to join an evening rave… [I thought] ‘this is what you want, you want energy, you want people on their feet at the start of it’”.

'I feel very privileged to be in a position where we can inspire women and bring them together in the scale that we did [at the event] in Edinburgh,' says Reid. Picture: contributed.

The Women On Top series, which has also now visited Scottish cities including Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen, has been supported by the Scottish Government Pathways Pre-Start Fund, after Egg was named one of the latter’s 20 beneficiary organisations, with others including Elevator and Women’s Enterprise Scotland. The Fund aims to help realise the recommendations of the independent review Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship by Eos Advisory partner Ana Stewart and tech expert Mark Logan that was published in February 2023.

Stewart, who spoke at the event at The Balmoral, has now said: “It’s essential to spread the net wider if we are to catch more women at the very beginning of their founder journey. Egg’s Women on Top programme embraces this approach by taking their series of events across Scotland, thus removing geographical constraints which often precludes women from considering entrepreneurship as a viable career option.”

The Pathways report had in fact stated that, as well as only 2p in every £1 of institutional investment going to female founders in Scotland, women frequently have a sense of “not belonging” in entrepreneurship, hampering their confidence and self-belief, and creating a vicious circle of a lack of representation.

That is something Reid is keen to combat, says networking does have a bad rap, and she knows people can find attending large events intimidating. “Part of our ethos is to make sure that everyone is seen and spoken to, and no one leaves not having felt some sort of connection.” Women on Top’s aim is “connecting and inspiring women, encouraging them to collaborate, set up and scale their businesses”, with each event being livestreamed and turned into a podcast, as well as offering free childcare to help overcome a major hurdle. On that note, a recent report from the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed found that 71 per cent of mothers and 50 per cent of fathers said it did not make financial sense for them to be working given high childcare costs.

The recent Woman on Top event at The Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh, which heard from pioneering businesswomen. Picture: Anna Moffat.

Reid brands the cost of childcare “excruciating”, adding that this is even if you can find an increasingly scarce place at a nursery. She says Egg has in the last couple of years “honed in more on the business side of things”, in May 2023 opening Egg & co-working, which it says is Scotland's first co-working space for women, including one day a month with free childcare, supported by Royal Bank of Scotland. Reid would like to increase this to once a week, and says Egg is building up a picture of how much an increased free childcare offering could help catalyse female entrepreneurship.

A survey published on IWD by Scottish-based female founders’ network AccelerateHer found that female company-founders across the UK were showing strong appetite for growth, with 92 per cent believing their business proposition had growth potential, but nearly two in five said getting access to the right resources and guidance was a challenge.

Against this backdrop, and also helping vindicate and reinforce the importance of Egg’s role, Reid believes, is the financial backing provided to Women on Top. “It's given me a renewed sense of confidence that we're on the right track, that we can amplify our message,” she says, welcoming what she sees as the validation of “something that started as a Facebook group to help me find friends in Edinburgh” and is now supporting thousands of female-led businesses.

Women on Top is returning to Edinburgh on April 24 for an “evening of empowerment”, featuring Jo Tutchener Sharp, founder and chief executive of clothing brand Scamp & Dude, and similar events will take place once a month this year around Scotland.

Reid, who previously worked at baby brand Cheeky Chompers and was part of a cohort of 20 businesswomen taking part in the recent Pathways to Scale programme led by Scottish Enterprise, has UK expansion for Egg in her sights – citing London and Manchester as potential targets. Other aims include running Egg Awards, and an Egg Academy on the back of workshops it has run, and a Women on Top all-day conference. “I've got an amazing team, and feel very privileged to be in a position where we can inspire women and bring them together in the scale that we did in Edinburgh. The energy in the room, the feeling of being part of something [at that event], just inspires myself and the team to carry on this good work, to spread it across Scotland [and the UK].”