A serious look at the venture capital world as it pertains to women, and what needs to change.

Only two percent of venture capital funds went to female founders in 2018. To make that number even more shocking is the fact that companies led by women perform sixty-three percent better than all-male teams. We could continue piling on even more, and point out that in the current venture capital cycles, there is no current trend line that puts women above ten percent representation, ever. How should we feel about the fact that approximately ninety-seven percent of the current overall investor base is male, very network and rolodex driven, and nearly impossible for women to tap into? 

To meet those numbers head on, it’s important to talk about wealth and the direct correlation to women. Right now in the United States, women hold eighty-six percent of the buying power across all consumer product categories. Women also, for the first time in recorded history, own the majority of personal investable assets- a number floating somewhere around twelve trillion dollars. Lastly, the majority of VC backed companies are actually selling D2C, with women holding that buying power. The reason I am making a case with all of these numbers is to shed light on a conversation every person in business should be having: female founders are not getting funded, regardless of the fact that women:

  • Launch startups and design products

  • Hold the buying power, therefore would resonate with a female-designed and female-led product

  • Hold the wealth and investable assets.

Elevating Female Entrepreneurs

Betsy Bluestone, the commercial discovery leader of P&G Ventures, has run into the same problem, and now works in a space to close this gap. “We just weren’t seeing as much innovation from diverse and female led teams as we wanted to but we know the female founders are out there.” With a partnership and support from parent company P&G, who spends over one billion dollars annually on woman-owned businesses in the U.S, Bluestone has hit the ground running, hoping to turn the investment world on to a more efficient, more flexible model. The partnership, with The Vinetta Project and Founder Vanessa Dawson, has allowed both P&G and Vinetta to expand their network reach, and bring access to areas it really has never been. As a female founder herself, Dawson found that women often lacked access to capital and high growth networks, and Vinetta Project is the solution she needed as a founder but didn’t have.

From A Failure Standpoint

Read the original INC article published on October 29, 2019.

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