Smart Money Goes to Women

I know that you're also passionate about women in STEM and female entrepreneurs having more support. Was one of the reasons that you co-founded Aspects Ventures to further give support to women who want to build businesses, but who were having trouble tapping into capital in traditional VC firms because very little of that money actually ever goes to female entrepreneurs?

Yeah, so it's interesting. Both Aspect and now Acrew are majority run by female investment partners. So myself and my partner Lauren and then my partners, Michelle and Mark. So we're equal. I guess what I would say is neither firm you know, we're focused on Series A. We have our sectors like cyber security, consumer, Internet, fintech that we focus on. And while we don't have an explicit mandate to invest in women or diverse founders, you know, this is very much a highly networked relationship business. It turns out that by having a diverse set of investing partners, you get a diverse set of deal flow. And it turns out that forty five percent of the founders that we've invested in today are women or underrepresented groups. And to give a contrast as compared to in the venture capital business in the mid to high teens of venture backed companies have a female founder, but they only receive two to three percent of the venture capital dollars.

Such a dismal figure.

So we're not talking like it's 50 percent better, like we're talking three to four times better without the explicit mandate.

It really does give great support to what we've been hearing is that the greater diversity you can have within your organization, it actually is good for the bottom line. It's not good just for social policy or a feel good initiative.

Yes, absolutely. By the time this airs, we will be able to have announced Acrew Capital's first fund. And I can tell you that speaking to the investors and seeing the data, it turns out that the first Aspect fund is a top quartile, top decile type performer. Now, we didn't have a diversity mandate. We didn't have any of those things. But you're absolutely right, I think that it turns out that it helps with the bottom line, because if we get differentiated deal flow that other people might not get or we get in some cases, even with some of our male peers, we get a seat at the table in a competitive deal because they are looking to diversify their boards and they love their board members. But they're like, OK, how about a different voice with a different perspective? And so it turns out that that has been a real competitive advantage. And I know there's been a lot more because it's a much bigger industry, like Fortune 500 studies by McKinsey and others, which show that a diversified board and diversified management team leads to anywhere between 10 to 20 percent points, improvement in return on equity and return on investment measures.