Kristin Hull, PhD’s Post

2023: 71.9% male only founded #venturecapital. 1st half of 2024: 83%. (#BoyMath using PitchBook data) "When women are part of founding teams, they often receive less #equity than their co-founders who are men. The exception is teams of 2, where founder equity is often split equally. In teams with more than 2 #founders, co-founders often prorated equity, rather than splitting equally among founders. In these cases, women tend to receive less equity than their counterparts who are men. 2023: 76.2% of the earliest-stage #money—pre-seed SAFEs and convertible notes—went to men-only teams. This disparity is wider than in the previous 3 years. The data here speaks to a dual barrier for early-stage founders who are women: They face difficulty joining co-founding teams 72.7% of founding teams at this stage did not include any women or non-binary individuals and when women are present, the teams raise less money. 👀 These disparities among the newest of companies speak to a continued pipeline problem in the #startup ecosystem. The mid-stage and late-stage companies of tomorrow are being founded today, and they continue to be founded disproportionately by teams made up entirely of men." Carta "For doing the same #work, women are getting less reward and hold less relative #power in their own companies. The question is why." Jennifer Hyman (slightly tweaked) https://lnkd.in/eT5zK2Q7 "As VC investment tightens, risk aversion intensifies. This conservative climate pushes investors back towards established #networks, potentially amplifying existing gender biases in #funding decisions. Investors may also be shifting focus towards industries with fewer female founders." Geri Stengel #InspiredByYou #OnRepeat with this post: https://lnkd.in/eVGtQPMg H/T to Mark Gannott for tagging me! To truly shift the flow of capital, we have to shift the #narrative, #mindset, the players, the infrastructure, the #laws...the ecosystem. Systemschange work at this level, requires unprecedented #collaboration and a re-framing towards inclusive #leadership in #assetmanagement #wealthmanagement #banking & #finance #Together we must... Recognize #Talent as an asset class and begin to #InvestDifferent #investing #entrepreneurship #intersectionality #economy #innovation #strategy #diversity #inclusion #belonging #culture #cultureofmoney Fig1 Carta https://lnkd.in/evpFzYix Fig 2 PitchBook https://lnkd.in/eBVbN_35

In recognition of International Women's Day, Palico extends our appreciation to the remarkable women both within our team and throughout private equity. Your expertise, vision, and dedication are driving innovation and growth across the industry. This past week we witnessed multiple developments that caught our attention: I - Although venture capital offers high returns, entry is difficult for many investors. The growing VC secondaries market provides a solution: buy existing stakes in VC funds for access to top firms, diversification, and faster exits and returns. While fair pricing is still being negotiated, the onset rebound of VC fundraising suggests a surge in secondary deals may be coming. To the family offices and high-net-worth individuals currently seeking a gateway into venture coupled with shorter investment horizons, these are the deals for you. Law firm Ropes & Gray LLP recently covered this opportunity: https://lnkd.in/druXb6KQ. II - Investors are bullish on private markets, with 88% of respondents to Adams Street Partners’ Global Investor Survey (https://lnkd.in/g6YXAw4H) expecting them to outperform public markets long-term. This confidence stems from private markets' ability to adapt to challenges and capitalize on tech trends like AI. Two-thirds of investors plan to increase private market allocations this year, with VC and growth equity poised for a strong comeback. Overall, private markets are seen as key catalysts fueling the current innovation boom. III - Mantra Investment Partners has unveiled its latest Niche Private Equity Index, a benchmark comparing specialist and mainstream PE performance. What really stands out here is the influence that fund size plays in delivering alpha. The research finds that smaller niche PE funds (under $500m) consistently outperform larger ones, while both beat generalist funds measured by net MOIC and IRR. This raises serious questions about the capital concentration trend that is underway in PE, with money flowing towards fewer, larger managers. The full report is available here: https://lnkd.in/efTpcjsj Keep an eye on private equity secondary deal flow
coming to our marketplace by subscribing to our newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gT8zDXGT #privateequity #secondaries #iwd2024 #internationalwomensday

This article of Sifted has shaken me up today: EU VC firms see exodus of women investors An increasing amount of women are leaving VC funds and choosing other job paths. We all had been hoping that the industry would slowly change by hiring more female investment managers and allowing them to grow into partner roles. But apparently in the current market down turn many of them do not see a future in this male dominated industry. When I moved into investing, I also felt that it would be hard in a fund that is dominated by a male culture and I hence decided to co-found Climentum Capital. We are 50% female led and owned and this makes a very big difference to me and my Co-GP Malin Carlstrom. I hope that many other women investors find their way to either change the existing funds or setup new more diverse investment companies, that will hopefully also invest in more diverse founders. Let's not forget that investing offers a great degree of flexibility and fit's nicely to classical strength of many women: networking, multi tasking, combining the dots of quantitative and qualitative insights. I see many reasons why we should soon be the majority of successful investors! https://lnkd.in/gKxxsCDz

Today is International Women’s Day, which underscores the vital role of inclusion and collaboration within the financial services industry, particularly among women-led firms like our own.   Our CEO Raudline Etienne recently spoke with Chris Witkowsky at Buyouts and helped shed light on the emerging network of such firms and our common commitment to supporting diverse and emerging fund managers.   Access to capital poses a significant challenge for many diverse firms due to the biases they often face. That’s where Daraja comes in by offering flexible capital and expertise to firm founders, facilitating the launch and growth of their funds. As Raudline told Chris, “Our model is to provide capital in a flexible form; we’ll help with the GP commitment, working capital, on occasion we’ll invest as an LP, it depends on what’s needed.”   Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gSRdY2SE   #IWD2024 #InternationalWomensDay #InspireInclusion

"What does a great #seedinvestment look like?" That is the question First Round Capital is looking to answer, by looking at their decade worth of data. This article includes some relatively "obvious" findings (i.e. further confirming age-old ecosystem narratives with data) while others might surprise some. Notable mentions include: #1: Female founders outperform their male peers "Companies with a #femalefounder performed 63% better than our investments with all-male founding teams. And, if you look at First Round's top 10 investments of all time based on value created for investors, three of those teams have at least one female founder — far outpacing the percentage of female tech founders in general." KEY TAKEAWAY: #diversity matters! Having founding teams with diverse backgrounds, worldviews, and perspectives ultimately leads to a better product and better business outcomes. (Special shout out to my #SheWinsArabia peers!) #7: Technical co-founders are critical to enterprise, not so much for consumer "[Teams with technical co-founders are] doing so well in enterprise — performing a full 230% better than their non-technical colleagues — that they skew the data set to make it look like teams with a technical co-founder perform 23% better overall. But this isn't the whole story. In fact, consumer companies with at least one technical co-founder underperform completely non-technical teams by 31%. KEY TAKEAWAY: you cannot use the same measuring stick for all startups. We need to step away from the habit of grouping all tech startups into a monolith. Differences matter - your #businessmodel (#B2B vs. #B2C), your product, your market, etc. All these have implications on your business - including the composition of your founding team. #9. The next big thing can come from anywhere. "For a long time, VC has been predicated on this idea that the best opportunities come through referrals, yet companies that we discovered through other channels — Twitter, Demo Day, etc. — outperformed referred companies by 58.4%. And founders that came directly to us with their ideas did about 23% better." KEY TAKEAWAY: exposure is key, and it goes beyond your direct network. While founder/investor networks are critical, the world is changing - and so is the VC market. Leverage your social media presence, capacity building opportunities, and take the chance of initiating direct contact. You never know what will stick!

“There are legions of future female Midas investors in our ranks today — all they need is mentorship and support from today’s men and women leaders to get there." Evgenia Plotnikova (KF Class 28) of Dawn Capital discusses developing talent and offering new investors opportunities to learn and shine. "Developing promising talent is not a tax. It’s a privilege and — if you give it a go — you’ll find it a joy too." https://lnkd.in/eruFth-y #learninganddevelopment #growthopportunities #investors #womenintech

We recently participated in the national conversation around female funders and founders at the "Mind the Tech 2024" event in New York. The women-led panel had collectively raised more than $150 million of capital. But do you know what? Every woman also expressed how hard and complex raising capital as a female founder or CEO is. Unsurprisingly, reports and statistics show a large discrepancy between men and women and highlight how much more work is to be done. - Female founders and co-founders secured 27.8% of deal value last year but that figure drops to 22.8% if you exclude Open AI's $10 billion raise. It's still a record high but there is absolutely room to close that gap. - Female founders secured 25% fewer deals. These numbers track with the broader venture market trends but still highlight the difficulties female CEOs face securing new deals. - Female check-writers at the largest VC firms grew slightly, up to 17.4%. WTC is a part of these important conversations and is proud of the strides that have been made. We also recognize that there are more ceilings to shatter and we can't wait to see more female funders and founders securing deals for their innovative companies and ideas. #funders #founders #raisingcapital #femalefounders #womenintech #womeninbusiness #venturecapital Cydni Rogers Tetro

Investment in female founders struggles to keep pace with 2022. According to PitchBook, as of September 30th, 2023, there have been fewer deals and less funding in the US for companies with at least one female founder in 2022. US VC deal activity in companies with all-female founding teams has been cut by half. 📉 Speaking about proportions of total deal count, the Female-founded company deal counts as a share of all US VC deal count keeps pace with last year, which is not necessarily good news. Companies with at least one female founder and companies led by female founders only participate in roughly 1/4 and less than 10 % of the total deal count, respectively. 🙎♀️ Despite being 50 % of the population, female founders are still underrepresented in the Venture Capital industry. With that in mind, what are the next steps? 🤔

Why should Institutional Allocators care about investing in women-founded companies and the funds that invest in them? I was asked this point blank recently and here's a snippet of my answer: With privilege comes responsibility— and I believe that there is a great opportunity for checkwriters to not only deliver financial returns but drive the change our world needs. 1️⃣ The clear competitive advantage First and foremost, this is a returns opportunity. Ultimately, investing in women is just good business: with women delivering twice the revenues with half invested. Yet, it is still not the norm when the majority of capital still goes to all-male teams. To quote one of our partner funds, Loyal VC Kamal Hassan: "It is in our interests as venture capitalists to invest in the best of all possible companies: it is ridiculous to sit here and say that 97% of the time the best companies will have a male founder" We continue to see great women across the board that are working on and funding some of the most game-changing technologies from edge computing to artificial intelligence and present tremendous upside potential for investors who recognize this untapped opportunity. With now 14 unicorns in our consortium from Canva to Everly Health—our partner funds agree! Beyond The Billion® (launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women®) 2️⃣ $30 trillion is about to change hands —the train is leaving the station, are you hopping on? 🚂 Importantly, as our partner Brown Advisory has recognized, we are in the midst of one of the largest wealth transfers of our lifetimes: to baby boomer wives who are inheriting and earning their potential; as well as to millennial children— all of whom care about purposeful investing. Firms that are not leveraging this opportunity, will lose out on this growing market. ps: 70% of widowed women break up with their deceased spouse's financial advisors! Why? They were never speaking to them! — 1. If you enjoyed this hit follow Sarah Chen-Spellings: I deconstruct next-generation trends and #BillionDollarMoves of unicorn founders and funders. 2. Repost this to share this with a business leader you know. — Special thanks to Suyi Kim CPP Investments | Investissements RPC for driving this important publication on #WomeninAlts with iConnections Diana Arakelyan (Link to report in comments) #investinwomen #privateequity #diversitydrivesreturns

😧 European VCs see an exodus of women investors! The women are mostly at more junior investing levels such as principal and associate, although several partners have also stepped down this year. Annalise Dragic was made partner at Sapphire Ventures in 2021, at the age of just 29, with huge fanfare — one of the youngest-ever female partners of a European VC firm. But now, Sifted understands, she will soon be leaving the firm — one of the dozens of women who have quit the VC industry in Europe since the start of this year, a worrying trend for an industry already struggling with diversity. The women are mostly at more junior investing levels such as principal and associate, although several partners have also stepped down this year, including Dragic and Cleo Sham at Stride. Though the numbers aren’t large, they are significant, recruiters say, given the small size of the industry. Read more 🔻 https://lnkd.in/dJ4RnHBE #femaletechleaders #femaletechleadersbrasil #womenintech #femaleleader #femaleinfluencer #womenempowerment #womenempowerement #femalefounders #womeninstem #inspirationwomen #rolemodels #representationmatters #web3uk