Cat Agostinho is Co-Founder of Imagen Insights, a qualitative research platform specialising in Gen Z and millennial audiences. Imagen was acquired by Tomorrow in March 2026. Cat continues to lead Imagen while also focussing on advisory work, mentorship and sharing her advice on the founder journey.
What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for women in your sector of the digital industry today?
Women make brilliant leaders with excellent ideas, entirely capable of founding and scaling a business but there is still limited support for women who either want to start and lead their own businesses, or who are in the early stages of doing so.
The problem isn’t ability or desire; it’s that too few women get the backing. Although the number of female entrepreneurs is growing, gaining investment is still a challenge. This funding gap can impact growth, especially in sectors such as technology, according to Funding Circle (2026).
It’s not just visibility, it’s structural. 86% of female entrepreneurs said they had trouble accessing finance to grow their business, compared with 76% of men, and 17% said access to funding was one of their top concerns for future growth (YFM Equity Partners, Entrepreneur Economy report).
These challenges present a massive opportunity to really invest in women. The stats speak for themselves and if we can encourage, support and fund women properly, at whatever life stage they are at, to create and build businesses, we will be better off for it.
What does the industry need to do to better champion women?
The industry needs to support women at whatever life stage an idea shows up, not assume there’s one right moment to start a business. I co-founded Imagen Insights while raising a newborn and part way through lockdown. Some start straight out of a job they’ve outgrown, some mid-career, some after 40. Backing women must flex around real life, not a template of what a founder looks like.
Teams with a female founder generate 35% higher returns on investment than all-male teams (Invest in Women Taskforce, 2025 Annual Report). When women demonstrate entrepreneurial ambition, this should be nurtured with proper financial and business education, because there aren’t enough resources out there.
What three things could employer companies do to make the digital industry better for women?
It amazes me that some companies still treat a degree as a proxy for capability. I took a pay cut to get my first job in this industry without one and spent years wondering if that would cap how far I could go. Luckily, it didn’t but I did have this hanging over me for years.
Build genuine flexibility into how people work. It’s not only about kids, but it can also be pets, mental wellbeing, working from a different location or abroad, or starting a side hustle. That kind of flexibility is what lets women stay and grow in this industry, at whatever stage of life they’re at.
Encourage networking and provide support on how to get the most from this, it can be incredibly daunting for many so support your employees with this. It builds confidence, their profile, and connections.
What support structures and organisations are most important and effective to you as a woman in the digital industry?
I co-founded Dawn in 2010, a network for women at all stages of their digital career. Almost no free networks existed at the time, so we ran quarterly events, free to attend, for over ten years, reaching more than 2,000 women. It cemented for me how much communities like this matter.
Networks play a huge role in my life, and investing time in them is how you build real connections.
If there were more female founder networks that didn’t always require payment or at least had more accessible payment options, it would be a huge advantage for many at different stages of their journey.
What is your biggest achievement in digital to date?
Selling Imagen Insights to Tomorrow Group in 2026, where I still lead the business today. That’s the headline, but what I’m most proud of is proving you can keep building without a traditional path in. I spent 14 years in media agencies before leaving that security to start my own my consultancy in 2016, then co-founded Imagen in 2019.
I then built a fitness instructing business with weekly waitlists alongside all of it. The WACL Talent Award and becoming a Campaign’s 40 Over 40 honouree, feel like recognition of that same thing: that you can keep building, in more than one direction, without ever having taken the conventional route in.
