💸 Fund F Debuts to Invest in Gender-Diverse Founder Teams
FemWealth Issue #84
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
In the Spotlight ✨
Lisa-Marie Fassl and Nina Wöss, founders of Vienna, Austria-based Female Founders - an organisation supporting women entrepreneurs - have launched Fund F, a new oversubscribed €20 million fund to back female and mixed-gender founded startups.
Driven by the belief that the biggest opportunity in European tech lies in gender-diverse founder teams, Fund F is Austria’s first-ever fund specifically for female founders and the first to be raised by a female general partner team.
“Over the last six years building Female Founders, we have had touch points with hundreds of tech entrepreneurs from all over the continent. By working with them and supporting them in their fundraising efforts we have come to the conclusion that more diversity is needed on both sides - founders and investors. Money talks, and the people deciding where investments are being allocated need to be diverse as well.” - Lisa-Marie Fassl, GP at Fund F
“In 2021 1.1% of all VC funding in Europe went to female-only led start-ups only just 8% went to mixed gendered teams. While the reasons for that are varied, we know one thing that is not a contributing factor - it’s not about the quality and quantity of the deal flow available in the early-stage segment.” - Nina Wöss, GP at Fund F
In the next four years, Fund F plans to invest in 25-30 pre-seed and seed-stage companies with at least one female co-founder. Equal representation on the cap table is a prerequisite. The sector-agnostic fund specializes in industries that directly contribute to the progress of humanity, with a focus on climate tech, femtech, healthtech, fintech, insurtech, and HR tech.
The companies must have digital and scalable business models that have both the ability to make money and a positive impact on the world.
Key investment criteria: 1) teams with at least one female co-founder; 2) digital and scalable business models; 3) pre-seed & seed stage with first traction; 4) founded and based anywhere in Europe
Key numbers: Ticket sizes will range between €100k-400k. Approximately 50% of the fund will be reserved for follow-on investments.
Key stats: 36% of the fund’s LPs are women, and more than 60% of the money invested in the fund is managed by women.
Talent: Carina Klaffl, previously Head of Female Founder’s accelerator Grow F, and Amelia Suda, previously Head of Talent, have been promoted to co-CEOs of the organisation.
Apply for funding: fund-f.com
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
💸 Sevetri Wilson Defies Odds As Black Woman Startup Founder, Leads Resilia To $35 Million Capital Raise - Founded and led by Sevetri Wilson, US-based Resilia sells software that helps nonprofit organizations manage their operations. Panoramic Ventures and Framework Venture Partners co-led the series B funding round, with participation from Mucker Capital, SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Fund, and Chloe Capital.
💸 Generally Intelligent secures cash from OpenAI vets to build capable AI systems - The AI research company, co-founded and led by Kanjun Qiu, has raised $20 million in initial funding (plus over $100 million in options).
“We believe that generally intelligent computers will someday unlock extraordinary potential for human creativity and insigh. (…) Generally Intelligent’s work aims to understand the fundamentals of human intelligence in order to engineer safe AI systems that can learn and understand the way humans do.” - Kanjun Qiu, co-founder and CEO of Generally Intelligent
💸 Flush with Series A funding, Daye unwraps the big gynae health mission - Founded by Valentina Milanova and led by Lisa Rodwell, the UK-based femtech startup raised £10 million (~$11.5M) Series A round from Hambro Perks, MassMutual Ventures, and Cross Border Impact Ventures. The fresh funding will support the launch of a vaginal microbiome screening kit, the rollout of a gynae health support platform, and a phased expansion of Daye’s products into the US market.
“The vision for why we’re doing [all this] is to enable every patient to have access to one, comprehensive gynaecological health platform that enables them to look after every component of their gynaecological health — from their menstrual health through to menopause and beyond; so covering vaginal health, hormonal health and really enabling people to understand their health record and understand their health profile covering those different areas.” - Valentina Milanova, founder of Daye
💸 Midi Health Launches Its Platform To Bring The Best Care To Women In Midlife, Supported By $14 Million In Seed Funding - Founded and led by Joanna Strober, Midi Health is a virtual care clinic making expert care accessible and affordable for women experiencing hormonal changes in midlife. The California-based startup raised $14 million in a seed round co-led by Felicis and SemperVirens, with participation from leading women’s health investors, including Emerson Collective, Icon Ventures, Operator Collective, Muse Capital, SteelSky Ventures, and Anne and Susan Wojcicki.
“Our founding team started Midi to change the status quo, and change healthcare for a massive demographic—our demographic.” - Joanna Strober, CEO of Midi Health
💸 Personal carbon-cutting app Joro raises $10M Series A from Sequoia, Jay-Z’s Arrive - Sanchali Pal is the founder and CEO of Joro, an app that helps people track and reduce their carbon footprints.
“I started building an Excel spreadsheet of the carbon emissions in my life, starting with food, and I ended up becoming this massive spreadsheet and ended up using it over six years to lower my emissions by about 30%.” - Sanchali Pal
💸 Mattilda wants to take over payment collection for Latin America’s private schools - The company co-founded by Ileana Gómez has raised $10 million in seed funding led by FinTech Collective.
💸 Uber alum rakes in $9.7M to curb finance-related fights between co-parents - Jacklyn Rome is the founder and CEO of Onward, a US-based company that aims to help divorced and separated parents more easily manage their shared expenses. The Series A round was led by TTV Capital, with participation from Lerer Hippeau, Citi Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and Gingerbread Capital.
💸 Carbon storage startup Paebbl raises €8m seed round - Sweden-based investor Jane Walerud and former Northzone partner Marta Sjögren are part of the founding team. The startup aims to bring its carbon-negative construction material to market.
💸 Evy wants to offer product protection insurance everywhere - Shana Azria is a co-founder and CTO of the France-based company. Evy raised a $6.5 million seed round from Sequoia, La Famiglia VC, and Global Founders Capital.
💸 Accel backs startup offering ‘Amazon-grade’ commerce engine to online sellers around the world - Kausambi Manjita is a co-founder and CEO of the India and US-based company.
💸 Healthcare startup Gabbi lands $4.4M to help women assess breast cancer risk and take action - Kaitlin Christin is the founder and CEO of the US-based startup building a tool to help women assess their risk for breast cancer. The funding round was led by Bread and Butter Ventures, with participation from Female Founders Fund, WR Hambrecht, Phoenix Rising, Claridge Ventures Advisors VC, Coyote Ventures, Gaingels, and angel investors. Also, read Vara Raises $4.4 Million In Funding To Bring Its Groundbreaking AI Breast Cancer Screening Platform To Millions More Women (male founding team)
“Everyone should have the tools that allow them to understand their risk and get access to the appropriate care.” - Kaitlin Christin, CEO and founder of Gabbi
💸 Caroline Spiegel raises $3.2 million for audio erotica startup Quinn (Fortune $) - Caroline Spiegel is the founder and CEO of Quinn, an audio erotica, creator-driven content marketplace. Investors include Day One Ventures, Global Asset Capital, Great Oaks, and Scooter Braun’s TQ Ventures.
💸 Ourspace, The Collaborative Team Design Platform, Raises $2.5 Million In Funding Led By Connect Ventures And Seedcamp - Megan Murphy (CEO) and Stephanie Bowker (CMO) are two of Ourspace’s co-founders. The remote company is on a mission to help tech leaders make smarter team design decisions by bringing together people, projects, and priorities into one contextual place.
“Tech leaders today face a big problem: they have talented people on their teams, but how they should be distributed and how to keep them engaged and aligned is currently a manual, biased and costly decision process.” - Megan Murphy
👩🏽⚕️ Cityblock Health CEO Toyin Ajayi on how to scale human-centered care models - Features Toyin Ajayi, founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, a US-based startup focused on providing affordable, human-centered healthcare in lower-income and marginalized communities, while also building sustainable business models.
“Do I believe that healthcare is a right, that should be available to all people, irrespective of their ability to pay and then it should be distributed equitably? Yes. 100%. And there are a lot of ways of achieving that.” - Toyin Ajayi
👀 How to budget for raising a round of funding - Hands-on tips from June Angelides, an investor at Samos Investments.
👩🏻💻 Bumble open sourced its AI that detects unsolicited nudes
“There’s a need to address this issue beyond Bumble’s product ecosystem and engage in a larger conversation about how to address the issue of unsolicited lewd photos — also known as cyberflashing — to make the internet a safer and kinder place for everyone.” - Bumble, in an official statement
📣 Shout-out to Just Her Rideshare, a female-founded and led rideshare community of women drivers and riders providing a safe alternative rideshare where women get the right to choose how they experience riding with others. The company is currently raising; check out their pitch deck here.
Accelerators, VC & GE: 💸 Square Peg Capital closes $550M fund for Southeast Asia, Australia and Israel - Piruze Sanbuncu is a Partner at the Australia-based firm, focused on consumer internet, fintech, edtech, future of work, health tech, and SaaS.
💸 Moneta Venture Capital raises $120 million for new fintech and insurtech fund - Meirav Har Noy is a Managing Partner of the Israel-based firm. The new fund will back growth-stage fintech and insuretech companies.
🇫🇷 Station F turns its main startup program into an acceleration program - Roxanne Varza is the director of the Parisian startup campus. Applications will open soon.
🎧 EQT Growth partner Carolina Brochado on the advice she’s giving portfolio companies now and the craziest thing she did to win a deal - Features EQT Growth partner Carolina Brochado in conversation with Eleanor Warnock, Deputy Editor at Sifted.
🫶 Diversifying VC and levelling the playing field: What’s the outlook? - Features Eleanor Kaye, Executive director of Newton Venture Program, a joint venture between London Business School and LocalGlobe VC with a mission “to make careers in venture capital more accessible and ensure the next generation of investors represents the world that we live in.”
“In a downturn and as a market matures, you can either bake-in the bias and row back on commitments to change, or you can double down and create the foundations for a better future. (…) We have the choice to create a genuinely representative sector over the coming years – the onus is on the VC community to meaningfully step up to the challenge.” - Eleanor Kaye
Women’s & Family Health: 🙌🏼 A top VC explains why she’s betting on these 3 trends in women’s health (Fortune $) - Features Anu Duggal, Founding Partner of Female Founders Fund
“I’m hopeful that for 2023 (…) that momentum continues and you start to see these companies going public, you start to see real proof points around some of these bets in women’s health. I think there’s never been a better moment to be building in that space.” - Anu Duggal
👶 Mom Founder Uses Texting To Transform Kid’s Healthcare - Features Ellen DaSilva, founder and CEO of Summer Health, a US text service that provides answers from board-certified pediatricians in 15 minutes.
Beauty Industry: 💃🏻 How Becoming A ‘65-Year-Old TikTok Sensation’ Has Reinvigorated Makeup Mogul Bobbi Brown - Bobby Brown is the founder of Jones Road, a direct-to-consumer beauty line in her signature minimalist, “no-makeup makeup” style. This is the first cosmetics company she has been allowed to create since selling her first brand, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, in 1995.
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
Giorgia Meloni sworn in as Italy’s prime minister. Some fear the hard-right turn she’s promised to take - Giorgia Meloni, a hard-right new leader was sworn in as Italy’s first female prime. Only six of the 24 ministers in her cabinet are women. Also, read Women pushed even further from power in Xi Jinping’s China
The lack of VC funding to women is a Western societal shortfall (TechCrunch $)
“That the solution is so simple — cutting more checks to women — highlights the discriminatory ideological strongholds that our society continues to impose on us.”- Dominic Madori Davis
UK startups’ gender pay gap worse than national average in 1992 - A new report shows that the gender pay gap at UK startups is more than double the national average and even worse than in 1992. Finance and tech roles have the largest gender pay gaps. The situation is not much better in France and Germany. Also, read Survey finds 67% of European women in tech feel under-paid compared to men, half experience sexism
How Confidence Is Weaponized Against Women
When women fail to achieve career goals, leaders are prone to attribute it to a lack of self-confidence. And when women demonstrate high levels of confidence through behaviors, such as being extroverted or assertive, they risk overdoing it and, ironically, being perceived as lacking confidence. No matter the outcome, women’s lack of career progression is blamed on them, an attack they share with other underrepresented groups.
Thank you for reading FemWealth! 🥰 Please share this edition with a friend if you enjoyed it. Wish you a relaxing Sunday and an exciting week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth