Women-founded startups show measurable positive results compared to those of men
Alumni Ventures (AV), the most active venture firm in the U.S. and number three in the world, according to Pitchbook ’22 and ’23, announced its inaugural AV Women’s Fund 1. Having raised $1.3 billion from 10,000 individual investors since its founding in 2014, the firm has funded to date over 350 companies founded or led by women of its 1300+ current portfolio companies.
Serving as America’s largest venture firm for individual investors, AV’s dedicated fund will now make investments in companies founded by highly accomplished women entrepreneurs. The new fund will offer approximately 15-20 investments, diversified by sector, stage, and region over the span of 12 to 18 months.
Now reaching its tenth anniversary, the venture firm has a community of 625,000+ members, many from top universities such as Harvard Business School, Cornell, and others. They are sources of new capital, deal flow, and value-added services for portfolio companies.
The membership community will be a resource base for the Women’s Fund, a women-centric network that will help source, invest in, and support top female-led startups.
The Women’s Fund seeks companies and trends at the intersection of innovation, venture investing, and female entrepreneurship. This builds on AV’s ten-year track record of $200M of investments made into female founders and CEOs, across healthcare, consumer, cybersecurity, fintech, and more.
Most notable are the 100+ AV portfolio companies founded solely by females and the other 245 having had at least one female founder and/or CEO. Research now reflects the achievements being made by women-founded startups.
High Performance of Women-founded Startups
- Startups founded and cofounded by women generated better results, yielding 10% more in cumulative revenue over five years,
- Women entrepreneurs are also less likely to file for bankruptcy than men,
- One-third of high-growth businesses worldwide are now run by women, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2021/22 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, and
- Female founders exited faster than the broader market with a median time of 7.2 years, and their companies have a lower burn rate, using 25% less capital per month vs. the overall market, according to 2022 Review of Funding for Female Founders by Female Founders Fund.
Data about Funding Women Founders
While data analysis shows that female startup founders are very strong candidates for funding, biases in venture capital remain. Pitchbook reports that in 2022 U.S.-based startups with “all-women teams” received just 1.9% (or around $4.5 billion) out of approximately $238.3 billion of total venture capital—a decline attributed to the poor economy—but indicative of the remaining work to gain gender equality when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs.
AV Women’s Fund Looks to the Future
The Women’s Fund is well-positioned for the future with Laura Bordewieck Rippy, Managing Partner, at the helm. She brings her investment and entrepreneurial tech startup experience to oversee the Fund. She was a Managing Partner at Ripplecreek Partners’ technology practice and General Partner at FA Technology Ventures. She also served as CEO at Handango, creating the first marketplace of mobile apps and at Microsoft, she co-founded two businesses in an elite swat team spun out of Bill Gates’ office. Laura holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Alumni Ventures offers investors high-quality, diversified portfolios from which to choose. Now with the launch of the Women’s Fund 1, there will be more and greater opportunities to invest in female entrepreneurs. They have a proven track record of better performance, higher value creation, and quicker exits—providing some optimism that the gender gap will narrow.
The Fund will join a growing list of top women-led and women-focused venture capital firms.
