The Helm, launched in 2017, aims to support women-owned businesses in two ways: by investing directly in their companies, and by building a marketplace that will make it easier for shoppers to patronize women-owned companies. The Helm has invested $1.4 million in a total of 10 companies, including direct-to-consumer fashion company Haute Hijab, women-focused co-working space the Riveter, and Fathom, a connected hardware company that uses machine learning to prevent injury. The fund is led by Erin Shipley, formerly an investor at Karlin Ventures, and Lindsey Taylor Wood, an adviser to philanthropies. The Helm's e-commerce platform is slated to launch in spring 2019.
Formed in 2015, Austin-based True Wealth Ventures is led by Sara Brand, a veteran of both McKinsey and venture firm Fremont Ventures. She's also active in a number of gender ratio organizations in entrepreneurship and tech, including Women@Austin, Rising Tide Fund, and DivInc. Her investing partner, Kerry Rupp, is the former CEO of digital health and urban tech accelerator DreamIt Ventures. The partners invest in female-led companies in consumer health and sustainability, and prefer to invest in the fund's home state of Texas. True Wealth usually invests at the seed stage, with a first check of between $250,000 and $500,000, and often takes a board seat. Its investments include UnaliWear, a smart watch for seniors or others with specific health needs, and cognitive assessment tool BrainCheck.
Twenty65 Fund was started by Trimantium Capital in 2018 specifically to invest in socially responsible businesses run by women and people of color. The fund is helmed by Abyah Wynn, who is also a vice president at Trimantium. She looks for opportunities across all industries and sectors, and prefers to make investments at the seed and Series A stages. Twenty65's early investments include Frequency, a digital and in-person wellness company. The company is based in Melbourne, Australia, and invests in both the U.S. and in the Asia-Pacific region.
When Lori Cashman and Suzanne Norris started reading about the gender funding gap in startups back in 2015, "It felt like a call to action," says Cashman. "We could provide capital, access to our network, and help find the next stage of investors. We realized it was up to us to make this happen."
Both women have a background in finance – Cashman in private equity and Norris in investment banking – and Norris has significant experience in operations as well, having launched and grown Kate Spade's ecommerce business. In 2016, the two started raising a small fund, mostly from friends and family. They made 14 investments, and saw enough traction and success to support the formation of a second fund. They're now raising that fund, with a target of $20 million. Many of the women who have invested in the fund, they say, have been successful in private equity. "They get it," says Cashman. "They know that the stage where we're investing is mission-critical for these companies."
That stage is seed, with the ability to make follow-on investments in a company's Series A or B. As of June 2019, the pair have made six investments out of the second fund, with check sizes that average $250,000 to $500,000. Victress invests broadly in tech-enabled consumer companies and services, as well as digital marketplaces and tech-enabled services. Their portfolio companies include Daily Harvest, a maker of healthy frozen foods; Blume, a personal- and menstrual-care company for girls; and travel brand SummerSalt.
Victress' ambitions are as big as those of its founders: In 18 months, the pair wants to be back in the market, raising a $50 or $100 million fund by late 2020.
Village Capital, based in Washington, D.C., has a unique method for choosing promising entrepreneurs: It gets a group of about a dozen entrepreneurs together and puts them through an accelerator program. At the end of the program, the entrepreneurs vote on which of their peers is most worthy of investment, and the top two companies receive seed funding from Village Capital's fund, called VilCap Investments. Village Capital is looking for entrepreneurs who are solving major global problems in agriculture, education, energy, financial inclusion, and health. It prioritizes underrepresented founders in underrepresented places.
