The Fight for Fairer Funding
1969
the year we landed on the moon
but more importantly
i was seven years old
and i remember one day saying to my mom
that i really loved chocolate chip
cookies and i wanted more
her response
let me teach you how to bake chocolate
chip cookies
baking quickly developed into cooking
and by the time i was 12
i was cooking dinner for the whole
family at least once a week
at the age of 15 i met my first
girlfriend and i said to my mom i think
i look smarter when i wear shirts that
have been ironed
simple she said
i’ll teach you how to iron shirts
in an age when baking
cooking and ironing were considered
women’s jobs
i’m grateful that my mom did not
subscribe to such constraints
50 years later
2019
i was standing on a stage talking about
raising venture capital funding for
small and medium-sized businesses
venture capitalists are professional
investors who buy shares in company in
return for cash so that those companies
can grow
after my talk a woman came up to me and
said
why is it that so little venture capital
funding goes to female entrepreneurs
i have no idea i said
but i’ll find out
and that ladies and gentlemen
is why i’m here today
to tell you what i found out
what i’m doing about it
and to share with you the stories of
three inspirational female entrepreneurs
who’ve successfully raised capital
about a week after that
event
i was in a meeting with the chief
executive of the br of british business
investments a subsidiary of the british
business bank
she and i had met at a networking event
and
were having a follow-up discussion we
had a very good conversation and towards
the end i decided to ask her if she knew
anything about this issue of female
entrepreneurs and venture capital
with a wry smile she reached down to the
bottom drawer of her desk
and brought out
this
abound research report entitled uk vc
and female founders vc being venture
capital it’s a full-scale research
report
that the british government commissioned
the bank to complete
they looked at every venture capital
deal in the uk in the year 2017
and what they found
was pretty stark
out of every pound
of venture capital invested in 2017
less than a penny
went to all female founding teams that’s
less than one percent
10
went to mixed gender teams
and more than 89 p out of every pound
went to all male
teams
if you’re anything other than a white
man chances are you knew this already or
at least suspected it
i’m ashamed to admit that i didn’t
and i was shocked
not long after that meeting i was having
another discussion with a friend of mine
who works at the london stock exchange
an organization that is leading the
charge on putting women into the boards
of of companies around the uk
she and i were talking about this ukvc
and female founders report
when it hit me
i felt compelled
to put on an event
to showcase
what could be done not an event that
moans about how wrong or unfair it all
is but an event that showcases female
founders who have successfully traversed
an uneven playing field
and raised capital to grow their
businesses
about a week before the event
morningstar published an article
in which they had researched the 1500
open-ended listed investment companies
in the uk
they found that 108 of those funds
were run by a man named david now as a
man named david i thought that was kind
of cool
but wait
that same article found
that just 105 funds
were run by women
more funds run by davids than by all
women
on the 25th of november 2019
we filled the theater at the london
stock exchange
we filled it with people who had come to
hear the stories of female founders who
had successfully raised capital to grow
their businesses
coming out of that event
i learned two key things
first up this isn’t just a uk problem
in our social media posts
surrounding the event we had comments
from people in 10 countries around the
world
australia
belgium
canada
china
france
germany
ireland
south africa
switzerland
and the united states
and they all said
it was a big issue for them too
and secondly
this isn’t just about women versus men
that day i heard stories from diverse
entrepreneurs of all manners and they
all face the same uneven playing field
this is a global issue and it affects
all of us
more money is run by men called david
and the vast majority of it goes to men
just like him
picka david any david should not be the
basis on which funding gets allocated
now here’s a really interesting
statistic
a research report published by global
firm boston consulting group
reported
that female founded firms
generated 2.5 times as much revenue per
dollar invested as male lead firms
2.5 times as much
investing in female founders is not just
a good thing to do
it generates superior investment returns
as well
over the last several months
i’ve interviewed dozens of female and
diverse entrepreneurs who have
successfully raised money
i’d like to share with you three of
their stories
fiona
runs a business called pod foods
it’s a multi it’s a
tech enabled
grocery supply chain that is focused on
delivering emerging brands
based in san
francisco they’ve now expanded into 10
states across the usa serving cities
like chicago
los angeles new york
and austin
fiona is singaporean chinese and an
immigrant to the usa
the cards were stacked against her
she looks different
sounds different and clearly isn’t from
around here
together with her co-founder larissa
they raised seven figures in seed
capital and used the money to invest in
their technology
they have now built pod foods so that
it’s carrying over 600 products and is
expanding quickly and they deliver these
to retailers across the united states
may is the founder of globechain
a multi-award-winning reuse marketplace
that redistributes
unneeded fixtures products and furniture
from corporates
to charities and individuals
and at the same time captures
environmental social and governance data
for their members
may and her family emigrated to the uk
from iraq in the 1980s and she lives in
london
she has since raised seven figures in
funding and built globechain to be the
largest reused marketplace in the world
with over ten thousand members
and operations in the uk
spain
the united arab emirates and the usa
may’s dream
is to divert a hundred million tons
from landfill
by 2025.
and daniella
the co-founder of cutis
a life sciences business based in zurich
that supports patients who are suffering
from large deep skin defects like burns
they are developing the world’s first
auto-produced
personalized skin tissue therapy
daniella comes from sicily and moved to
switzerland to complete her phd and
post-doctoral studies
she’s since then raised through several
rounds eight figures in investment
funding
and use that money to build her team to
develop the technology and to complete
clinical trials so that they can enter
the orphan burn market in the european
union and the usa
having interviewed these inspirational
founders
three key things became very clear to me
first up
pitch your dream
ask for more money than you think you’re
going to need
ask for it more often
and don’t undervalue your business using
conservative forecasts
secondly
take the time to find the investors that
are the most suited to you and your
business perhaps they’re run by females
or by other diverse investors take the
time to find them and craft a pitch
that’s just for them
and finally
fundraising is a full-time job on top of
the day job
it can be mentally
physically and emotionally very draining
and it can last for months
look after yourself
and don’t try and do it alone
50 years ago
i got lucky
my mom taught me about equality
the first step for me was learning to
bake chocolate chip cookies
having since discovered the grave
injustice that female entrepreneurs face
and diverse entrepreneurs
that they face and having felt the shame
of not even realizing this existed
the next steps for me
are to raise this awareness to the men
who control the money
and to raise this issue
worldwide to governments and ngos
if you’re an entrepreneur looking to
raise capital the next steps for you are
to articulate your dream and find the
right investors they are out there
and finally no matter who you are
please
get in touch with your local mp or
congress person or whatever the
representatives of your national
government are called
tell them about this issue
on behalf of david’s everywhere we must
level the playing field
with your help
we will
thank you
[Applause]