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Investors like a safe bet, so why aren't they betting on women founders? It's been proven repeatedly that VC-backed startups founded by women outperform their counterparts. Yet, a recent survey by Pink Salt Ventures found that 97% of respondents claimed there is a fundamental difference in how investors treat male and female founders. Clearly, venture capitalists are still leading their funds with implicit bias. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gujg5xZC #FabricVC #WeaveWithUs #VentureCapital #DiverseFunding

Thank you Leslie Feinzaig, Divya Kakkad, and Jenna Winocur for a great investor event for Graham & Walker yesterday! A highlight from yesterday was listening to Pam Kostka's insights on the four major challenges female founders (and people of color) face when raising capital for their businesses. These are summarized in this great article by GeekWire. I'm focused on two of the challenges where I can make the greatest impact to improve the statistic that less than 2% of VC funding goes to women: capital and connections.   1️⃣ Capital - what the article doesn't mention is that funding women truly starts at the LP level, not the GP. If investors aren't willing to invest in GP's who are investing in women, then less money will go to supporting female-founded businesses. Parcion Private Wealth continues to partner with GP's who support female founders and I'm honored that our client families understand the opportunity of these investments (both for investment returns and impact to their communities). 💭 There are many firms in addition to Graham & Walker that support this ethos. A few others I have the pleasure of knowing are: Rogue Women's Fund, Rogue Venture Partners, Emmeline Ventures, RareBreed Ventures , VITALIZE Venture Capital, and Symphonic Capital, though there are a LOT more and this is a great list: https://lnkd.in/gkcGjqn9 2️⃣ Connections - we need to keep talking about this and building a community of support around women. This includes awareness of the amazing companies being founded by women! I have listed below the founders and their businesses that were highlighted yesterday. Please look at what they are building and see if they are solving a problem that you or your company is currently facing. ✨ Nicole Schmidt // Source Procurement (REITs, real estate developers/investors, hotels/restaurants, this is for you) ✨ Tiya Gordon // itselectric (if you have an EV or want an EV but don't have a solution for charging, I would see what itselectric is building) ✨ Arianna Trujillo-John // OpenField (if you believe in democracy, pay attention!) ✨ Kate Wallich // Dance Church (everyone can use more dance in their lives!) I'm excited to partner with my amazing colleagues to continue building Parcion Private Wealth to better support the needs of business owners and their families, especially the needs of women business owners. As a reminder, we work exclusively with business owners to unlock the true potential of their wealth, supporting them leading up to, through, and after life-changing liquidity events. Please reach out if I can be a resource.

📈 Female entrepreneurs reached a record-high 27.8% of total VC deal value, marking a significant jump from last year's 18.7%. Additionally, the representation of female decision-makers in venture firms saw growth, hitting 17.4% for firms with assets over $50 million and 18.8% for smaller firms, up from 16.1% and 18.8% respectively in 2022. While progress is evident, there's still much work ahead. 🚀 Despite overall venture dealmaking declining for the second consecutive year to $34.4 billion in 2023, down from $44.2 billion in 2022, there's a silver lining in the rise of female-led ventures. However, exit activity for female-founded companies in the U.S. experienced a significant drop, falling by over one-third since 2022 to its lowest level since 2016. This underscores the challenges female entrepreneurs face in achieving exit strategies amid the overall decline. Read the full Chicago Inno story ⬇

"PitchBook’s latest report shows that all-women founding teams have raised 1.9% of all venture capital dollars so far this year, or $2.4 billion out of the total $125.85 billion allocated through Q3." (Source: TechCrunch) We've all known for a while that the standard is for less than 2% of all VC funding to go to women-led startups (before it was <1%, so progress?). Yeah, you'll hear me complain occasionally about how f**** up this is because how can you not? But I'm also out here, I'm starting a company and trying to raise funds until I absolutely can't do it anymore. I've been beat down more times than I ever could have imagined but every day I get back up and keep going and choose to pretend that data point is artificial. It does get lonely though so here is my ask: more women should get involved in entrepreneurship, even if you've thought about it for just a second. Second, more people should fund them to do so. Doing either one of those things makes you a changemaker. https://lnkd.in/gfKf-Ar3

A core specialization of 2 VENTURES' is our focus in woman-owned and led companies. 2 VENTURES is a boutique M&A advisory firm specializing in the middle and lower middle market, and in family and founder-led companies. As a woman-owned company ourselves, 2 VENTURES is passionate about supporting other women. There are many reasons companies and private equity firms should invest in woman-owned and led companies: > Over a 10-year period, female-led companies performed 63% better than male-led companies, per recent research. > Businesses founded by women bring in twice as much revenue as businesses founded by males. > Companies led by women or gender-diverse teams are 21% more likely to bring in more profits than companies led by all-male teams. > Increasing female leadership from 0 to 30% is linked to a 15% increase in profitability. Women-led companies also tend to earn more and have a higher chance of profitability than businesses led exclusively by males. These companies can help improve local communities by creating more opportunities for growth and investment. With a long heritage in the venture capital tech startup sector, 2 VENTURES leverages decades of experience growing companies. We are experienced M&A advisors with a specialized focus in middle market buy-side and sell-side advisory services. Our niche industry and specialized expertise were catalysts for our formation, due to client requests. > Entrepreneurial Heritage > Specialized M&A Expertise > Niche Expertise 2 VENTURES is a division of N2M . To learn more about 2 VENTURES please reach us at: https://lnkd.in/ePv8uamJ #mergersandacquisitions #buyside #sellside #midmarket #privateequity #womanowned

A study by Pink Salt Ventures reveals: 🔹 97% feel there's a difference in how investors treat male vs. female founders. 🔹 83% see a lack of female decision-makers in VC as a barrier to funding. These findings underscore the importance of addressing systemic biases and promoting a more inclusive investment landscape. As advocates for change, it's imperative that we amplify these voices and work towards a more equitable startup ecosystem. Read here!: https://bit.ly/47sqAbT #InvestmentDisparities #TechStartup #FemaleFounder #InvestInWomen #WomenInBusiness

How do we move the dial on access to funding for women-led ventures? Get more women in VC. Thanks to Melissa Houston and Forbes for highlighting the work by Michelle Scarborough and BDC Thrive Venture Fund. Increased visibility, increased networking, increased investment opportunities, more inclusive workspaces, and inspiration for future generations are all key points. I would also add that the market will definitely benefit from great collaboration across investors and VCs with more women in VC leadership. They will have greater opportunities to co-invest in scaling businesses led or co-led by women. In addition, as women often are leading impactful ventures in sectors such as health, women's health, and sustainable CPG, there is an opportunity to scale the impact of VC dollars with more women VCs at the helm. In Canada, I'm inspired by the work of Michelle and Sevrine at BDC, Shelley Kuipers and Judy Fairburn at The51, Brenda Irwin at Relentless Venture Fund, Olivia Hornby (Shamash) at Spring Impact Capital, Rhiannon Davies (she/her) and the team at Sandpiper Ventures, Lise Birikundavyi, CFA and BKR Capital, Althea Wishloff and Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, Kathryn Wortsman and Amplify Capital, Hilary Kilgour + Raissa Espiritu and TheVenture.Fund fund and the other women in VC in Canada. The movement has momentum, and now is the time to build on that at scale. #investinginwomen #genderlensinvesting #venturecapital #canada https://lnkd.in/g2K5ME2P

Unveiling Startling Insights: Female Founders Speak Up On Investment Disparities Pink Salt Ventures is a UK-based venture capital firm with a focus on empowering female founders. In the world of investment in female-founded companies, we uncover a series of thought-provoking statistics that might make for uncomfortable reading, especially for those who've turned a blind eye to the glaring gender disparities in the tech and startup ecosystem. Dana Kanze, Samira Ann Qassim, Saloni Bhojwani #FemaleFounders #TechNews #GenderDisparity #Entrepreneurship https://lnkd.in/dYaenwMz

🔵 Don't let the headline fool you. What it means is that we Barbies will never be enough and that we will still need a Ken on our founding team to raise venture capital. 😞 "Companies with founding teams that are all women raised around $3.1 billion — or 1.8% of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year — which is a dip from $5.1 billion (2.1%) in 2022 and from the $7.3 billion (also 2.1%) raised in 2021’s bull market. In fact, this is the lowest percentage of venture capital allocated to such teams since 2016, when they picked up 1.6% of all venture funds. There is good news for mixed-gender founding teams, however. Such teams raised 26.1% of all venture capital allocated this year, a sizable jump from the 18.2% they picked up last year. This follows the pattern that women founders still fare better with a male co-founder in the mix. Kyle Stanford, lead VC analyst at PitchBook, told TechCrunch+ that it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason why funding to women founders has dipped a bit, but he added that the decline in deal counts for women founders follows the trends of the broader market. Otherwise, he said, data shows there is still a long way to go before the market is seen as equitable.“Venture has had several tough years, and capital availability in the market has declined significantly. In general, the VC market saw declines of nearly 20% in deal count and 50% in deal value between 2021 and 2023,” he said. “That is not meant to make activity in female-founded companies look better, but the context of market difficulties is important. Overall, less than 25% of all deals went to female-founded companies in 2023. The most popular category was software, where around $8.4 billion was invested, followed by B2B, SaaS, and pharmacy and bio. New York City takes the top spot for where women receive the most deals, followed by San Francisco and Los Angeles. #ifundwomen #ifundwomenofcolor #vcfunding #techcrunch https://lnkd.in/gVVmMDBf