Avestria Ventures this past week announced the closing of the Avestria Ventures Fund I. The two plus year old venture capital firm focuses on supporting and funding women. The firm’s cofounders, Linda Greub and Corinne Nevinny, seek out companies that are addressing women’s health issues, while also supporting women entrepreneurs and women led companies that have historically faced challenges raising capital.
The two successful women business leaders became friends while attending the Harvard Business School (HBS).Upon graduating the two pursued different paths in business, only to reconnect years later after both had achieved significant career success.
Greub began her career in equity investment management while working in private hedge funds. She then gravitated toward life sciences that brought her back home to the Bay Area where she worked as a healthcare research analyst for Bank of America Securities.
Her friend Corinne Nevinny who studied industrial engineering as an undergraduate at Stanford University before entering HBS, became an investment banker specializing in healthcare. She held positions at Kidder Peabody, Dillon Read and UBS. Later in her career she joined biotech company Tularik as CFO, leading its IPO. She then joined Edwards Lifesciences as CFO, assuming the leadership role of President of Global Operations and GM of its Cardiovascular Division.
In 2019 the two seasoned business leaders and also friends launched the San Francisco-based Avestria Ventures. They took this major step after successfully investing their own funds in early stage companies. A couple of highly rewarding exits from the ventures they had funded indicated the two friends had found a winning investment formula. Their 30+ years of healthcare investment and operating expertise combined with their life science industry networks was paying off.
Their early investing opened their eyes to a number of issues women face. They became aware of the lack of venture capital funding for companies addressing women’s health. They also learned how difficult it is for women entrepreneurs and women-led ventures to gain funding.
In the latter performance data revealed that women funded ventures outperform those of their male counterparts. Yet, only 2.3% of venture capital was invested in female-led companies last year, even though female-led teams generate a 35% higher ROI than all-male teams.
“Men still represent approximately 85% of the investment partners at venture capital firms,” Greub summarized, “and many of them are missing out on great investment opportunities when they underinvest in women’s health and female entrepreneurs.”
In the area of women’s health, Greub and Nevinny referenced a major decision made by the NIH. While the agency has accepted sex as a biological variable since 2016, less than 1% of the venture capital of the $4 trillion US healthcare industry was directed toward women’s health in 2020, according to Pitchbook Inc.
“We believe that both of our focus areas – women’s health and female-led life science companies – are ripe for innovation,” Greub said. “And the two exits we’ve already had indicate that strategic investors are beginning to draw the same conclusion.”
The two women business leaders were pleased to announce the recent closing of Avestria Ventures Fund I. They are now seeking early stage life science companies founded or led by women teams that have products or services that address unmet needs and improve healthcare quality and/or access.
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