🌍 Omolara Awoyemi's Fast Forward Wants to Build African Startups From Idea to Scale
FemWealth Issue #82
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
Today’s edition features the latest and greatest in women-led startups, VC, business, arts, and culture:
In the Spotlight 🌍
Omolara Awoyemi is a co-founder and operating partner of the pan-African venture studio and early-stage fund Fast Forward.
On a mission to build and back companies to unlock prosperity in Africa through technology, Fast Forward aims to build companies in sectors such as B2B and B2B2C services, infrastructural fintech, e-commerce, future of work, edtech, healthcare, logistics, deep tech, blockchain, and globally scalable SaaS out of Africa.
The venture studio’s portfolio includes Bumpa (a social commerce platform for over small businesses), AltSchool (a platform for learning coding and other tech-related skills), TalentQL (a subsidiary of AltSchool and a platform connecting tech talent with employers), a.o.
Read more: Fast Forward Venture Studio to build African startups from idea to scale
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
💸 Airwallex raises $100M to power cross-border business banking, valuation stays flat at $5.5B - The Hong Kong/Australia-based startup, co-founded by Lucy Liu, provides cross-border banking and other financial services for businesses. It has raised $100 million in a Series E-2 extension.
💸 Brave Health nabs $40M to scale up virtual mental health services for Medicaid members - The Miami-based company, co-founded and led by Anna Lindow, is a virtual-first behavioral health provider focused on serving Medicaid populations.
💸 FOLX powers LGBTQ+ telehealth support groups with $30M round - Liana Douillet Guzmán is the CEO of FOLX Health, a US-based telehealth company catering to the LGBTQIA+ community.
💸 Fairly Made wants to reduce the environmental footprint of the fashion industry (in French, $) - The French company, co-founded by Laure Betsch and Camille Le Gal has raised €5 million, led by ETF Partners and French Founders.
💸 Sequoia accelerator alum Fides raises $4.3m seed - Lisa Gradow (CEO) and Philippa Peters (COO/CLO) are co-founders of Fides, a legal SaaS platform that wants to help companies fulfill their corporate governance duties. Berlin-based early-stage VC fund La Famiglia (co-founded by Jeannette zu Fürstenberg and Judith Dada) led the round, with participation from Cristina Stenbeck (owner of Kinnevik and board member at Zalando and Spotify), Gesa Miczaika and Bettine Schmitz from the Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, Christa Davies (CFO of AON, board member at Stripe and Workday) and Katharina Jünger (founder of TeleClinic).
💸 cylib scores €3.6M to recycle lithium-ion batteries more efficiently - The German company, co-founded and led by Lilian Schwich, has developed a new proprietary eco-efficient recycling method enabling the extraction of all the materials from a lithium-ion battery in an environmentally friendly way.
“Today’s battery production is not green. With our recycling process, we enable the future production of sustainable battery cells. For the huge amount of batteries that will be required for electromobility in the future, a circular economy is required. Our holistic approach to recycling helps protect people, the environment, and the climate as much as possible.” - Lilian Schwich
💸 Tallinn-based Cloud Factory raises €2 million for its scalable zero-waste jewellery factory - The startup co-founded by Kati Kask (COO) helps musicians, brands, and celebrities create their own branded jewellery merchandise through a fully managed service that offers concept building, manufacturing, branded packaging, and drop-shipping.
💸 Shimmer Launches with $1.3M in Seed Funding to Make ADHD Coaching More Accessible - The digital health startup, co-founded and led by Christal Wang, has launched a science-informed and evidence-based coaching platform. It has also announced its seed funding from Y Combinator, Honeystone Ventures Koa Labs, Megan Hall (V.P., CVS Health), and Gaingels, a.o.
“My life was paved with ‘too’ this, ‘can’t’ that, and ‘stop’ these: Chris, you’re too talkative, too disruptive, can’t listen, can’t follow instructions, stop moving, stop daydreaming. I was always wrong. After finally getting diagnosed earlier this year, I felt light; I had a name, an explanation, and path forward. However, what I quickly found was that resources for adults were few and far between, designed with the 5-year-old boy in mind, and focused solely on ‘fixing’ me. So, we asked ourselves: how can we create a gold standard adult ADHD experience that is not only quality and affordable, but both builds up the messy parts of ADHD (like executive dysfunction) and celebrates and strengthens the positives like creativity, empathy, and energy?” - Christal Wang
💸 EdTech startup Ludenso secures $1M to create augmented reality universe for education - Ingrid Skrede is a co-founder of the Oslo-based augmented-reality educational platform provider.
📣 Shout-out to Divya Upadhyay, co-founder of The Mango Jelly, a global community-driven marketplace and product ecosystem for content creators to discover diverse economic opportunities with brands, fellow creators, and fans. If you are an investor or creator, get in touch with Divya via Twitter.
🙌🏼 Best Friends Quit Jobs to Start Game Changing Condom Company - Features Dr Sarah Welsh and Farah Kabir of Hanx.
“We essentially wanted to build products that weren’t garishly packaged, or promoting a man’s conquest. We wanted products that were kinder to the body and kind of the planet.” - Farah Kabir
VC: 💸 The highs and lows of Q3 venture capital data for women startup founders (TechCrunch $) - In the US, all-female teams raised $3.6B (out of a total of $194.9B) across 742 deals this year. By contrast, in 2021, an outlier year, all-female teams raised $8 billion across 1,132 deals. Female-founded startups are more impacted by the market downturn than mixed or all-male teams. For more coverage on the topic, follow Dominic-Madori Davis, senior reporter, VC and startups at TechCrunch.
“There is no logical justification for why female founders should be impacted any more so than any other founder category, be it in a bear or bull market.” - Pippa Lamb, Partner at Sweet Capital
🧬 Inventing the future with scientific breakthroughs: Interview with Tess van Stekelenburg from Hummingbird Ventures - Features Tess van Stekelenburg, an investor at Hummingbird Ventures, a global early-stage fund investing in founders building deep tech solutions.
Business & Career: 👩🏻💻 ‘It’s like running a different company every two years’: AMD CEO Lisa Su on the chipmaker’s stunning ups and downs
“We have lots of things in front of us, and that’s what we’re always thinking about. What does the next five years bring? And that’s really helped us grow as much as we have.” - Lisa Su
👉🏼 First jobs: how did your early work experience shape your career?
👏🏽 Daughters Of Billionaires Take Their Place In India’s C-Suites
🤝 Ask the professor: Wharton’s Mori Taheripour on how to negotiate the right way - Features Professor Mori Taheripour in conversation with TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos. Also, read Prof. Taheripour book Bring Yourself. How to Harness the Power of Connection to Negotiate Fearlessly
“At the heart of all negotiations is human connection. That’s where the magic happens. Most negotiations are not transactional. The best negotiations are either fostering relationships that we already have or creating new ones. And once you look at it that way, then negotiations become a conversation. Some conversations are harder than others. But they shouldn't be if we open our minds to them with a sense of empathy and wanting to be creative and wanting to not focus on any one solution.” - Mori Taheripour
Inclusive Design: 👀 From Pharrell’s Inclusive Skincare Line To A Lube With Braille Writing, Consumer Brands Are Finally Starting To Think About Blind And Visually Impaired Customers - By Bérénice Magistretti, angel investor, emerging fund manager and disabilities advocate
Climate & Sustainability: 🔆 Banks Run by Women Lend Less to Big Polluters, ECB Study Finds (Bloomberg $) - Research published by the European Central Bank shows that banks with more gender-diverse boards lend less to more environmentally harmful companies.
Arts & Culture: 👩🏾🎨 ‘Everything I do is saying Black lives matter’: how artist Amy Sherald defined an era - Features American painter Amy Sherald, who gained broad recognition for her portrait of Michelle Obama. Sherald’s first solo exhibition in Europe, The World We Make, opened on 12 October at Hauser & Wirth, London.
🎨 Modern women rediscovered: Frieze Masters focuses on female artists - The Spotlight section of the London fair is showing 26 solo booths of 20th-century women artists who have been overlooked in art history.
🎥 Mila Kunis Gets Candid About Her New Netflix Film, Her Aid Efforts For Ukraine And Parenting In America Today - Features Mila Kunis, actor and producer of the new film Luckiest Girl Alive. Also, read I Wanted Revenge. What I Got Was Better., by Jessica Knoll, the film’s screenwriter, executive producer, and author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive.
Sports: 🏃🏽♀️ How Robin Arzón Learned To Trust Herself. How the lawyer-turned-Peloton superstar sought out to find her purpose and “architect a new life.” - Follow Robin Arzón on Twitter or Instagram.
“There are so many moments where I feel like I don’t have it figured out. But then I remember all the times when I didn’t have it figured out before, and here I am. So who’s to tell me I don’t know enough to make the next best choice?” - Robin Arzón
What I'm Reflecting On 💭
Headscarves Are Not the Only Thing Women Are Protesting in Iran
(...) there’s no modern society that treats women equally. There’s no society without a pay gap between men and women. (...)
But Iran is definitely a special case in the sense that it exhibits some truly crass contrasts. It’s a society in which women are, relatively speaking, very well-educated compared to [the country’s] income level. So 71 percent of women over the age of 25 have at least some secondary schooling, compared with 76 percent of men. So both the levels and the gap—their levels are very high, and the gaps are relatively small. And as you say, women are heavily represented in Iran’s universities. But at the same time, women’s labor market participation in Iran is shockingly low. (...) it’s only 14 percent.” - Adam Tooze, historian, professor at Columbia University
36% of US counties are ‘maternity care deserts,’ raising risks for women and babies, new report finds - A recent report published by the infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes found that more than 2.2 million US women of childbearing age (15 to 44) live in maternity care deserts.
“They live in places where there is either no or limited obstetric care – counties that don’t have a hospital that offers obstetric services, no ob-gyns, no certified nurse midwives, no birthing centers. Today, the US is considered, among all highly industrialized countries, one of the most dangerous developed nations in the world in which to give birth. And part of the problem with that, and part of the reason for that, is because of these huge gaps in access to care.” - Stacey Stewart, President and CEO of March of Dimes
Time’s Up Began in a Stirring Oprah Speech and Wound Up in a Disreputable Heap. How? | Also, read More than a ‘Weinstein survivor’: Women continue to reclaim their voices five years after #MeToo
“A problem that happened with Time’s Up was the focus on symbol and perception over very unglamorous, quiet, real work.” - Rebecca Keegan, Senior Film Editor at Hollywood Reporter
Thank you for reading, FemWealth! 🥰 If you enjoyed this edition, please share it with a friend! Have a wonderful Sunday and a fun week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth