Mother of the term Femtech two kids. Co-founded Clue. Working on a book about Femtech, and a think tank to articulate the link between Femtech, economy and planetary health. Travelled the world on motorcycle.
5. What is being funded 2/2 - Why is it so hard to find an investor? What is this? It's "8 Radical Ideas for Venture Capital," part 5 of 8. See the introduction below. **Problem** Investments driven by investors' narrow set of life experiences disadvantage people and ideas that look different from the average VC. **A Solution** Open up funding rounds for private micro-investors to participate in. Private individuals can buy shares easily, similar to the public markets, and they all figure as one sub-pool on the cap table under the VC they are following. This (probably) comes with no decision-making power nor information rights and doesn’t add to the counted percentage of share ownership by the VCs that raised the crowd-follow investments. Several VCs can do this, and the cap is set by the founders. This way, VCs get a direct sense of the market potential, which isn’t influenced by their own biases. **Introduction:** I have pitched to VCs, angels, corporates, and family offices, and applied for public grants as CEO at @clue. Gosh, how much time was wasted for everybody! In a tech industry obsessed with high performance, optimization, and radical ideas, it’s strange that the awkward social dance of fundraising attracts so little attention as an area ripe for innovation. Perhaps it does, and many models are being tried out? Well, as a founder, that wasn’t my experience… “8 Radical Ideas for VC” are ideas on how to do better! Refine these ideas or come up with even better ones on how to change how money flows in the tech world—we are all wasting too much time. Plus, it’s a system vulnerable to systemic bias, and the results are not good; we all know the stats. The next posts will be about: (1. The deal flow) (2. The pitch deck) (3. Wealth distribution) (4. What is being funded 1/2) (5. What is being funded 2/2) 6. Accountability 7. Time it takes to raise 8. What is success (Subject to change) #VC #fundraising #founder #startup #capital #fair #diversity #newparadigm #sustainability
Just a thought, Is it about who is in the c suite or who the product will serve? As a male c suite member looking for qualified women to join the c suite it is not so easy to find great candidates, even for an amazing product for diagnosing #Endometriosis like #Endosure. Imagine the quantum diagnostic change of going from yesterday's average of 8.6 years and 5-10 docs from symptom presentation to diagnosis to today's Endosure...a completely noninvasive 30 minutes test to 98-99% accurate diagnosis...and yet there is enormous resistance from male and female gyn's. It now begs the question, "tell me doctor, why don't you want your patient to know what's wrong with her? why are you opposed to your patient having a low cost, noninvasive and accurate answer to if she has endometriosis?" Many investors are the same. They only invest when the question becomes personal and or answerable . Do you give up? Hell no! You just pucker up and keep kissing the frogs until the first prince appears and then attracts all the other princes. And what of the frogs? They are there to make us stronger, regardless of gender! After all, something has to populate the ponds and rivers and streams we all have to wade through to get to the other shore!
Love this and couldn’t agree more - we are in the middle of fundraising for “hardware” and consumer (a VC nightmare). The funds with signs /websites saying “revolutionize, think differently, rebel, innovate, take risks” need to add a clause that says [as long as it’s B2B SaaS!]. The “venture” in VC and “risk” of capital at risk seems to have disappeared, which is so detrimental to diversity in the ecosystem - in every sense. (That said, Nick Shipley and I aren’t giving up on Jack Fertility and are committed to one day laughing with all of the [many] small funds, small chèque angels who get the Jack kit out, as it is so obvious this is something people want and need). Thanks, Ida!
Omg so true! Recently I saw an investor complaining that from 400 decks he saw, it was 0 female founded companies. I told him - hey let’s talk. He asked me to send a deck and of course his answer without even talking to me was a no, because he does not have expertise in this field. 🤣🤯😂 I literally wanted to answer him LOL
on sabbatical
2moI like this one Ida Tin ! The question I think boils down to, what conditions (including regulatory conditions affecting speed and accessibility) would make it attractive for some VCs to specialize in essentially raising from the crowd for a specific investment (or a bundle of a particular type of products that are under-invested in for the reasons you mention, eg Femtech? :)), instead of raising big cheques from LPs. Perhaps Andrew A. Schwartz has an idea. Because fundamentally, VCs will have to solve the same problem that companies do in fundraising - time is limited, and raising lots of small investments constrained to one purpose seems like a lot more work and more uncertainty than raising from fewer sources, with discretion under the universal thesis of ‘disruptive and highly scaleable technology that is very likely B2B SaaS’