Femstreet Issue #51 - Weekly Newsletter on Women in Tech & VC
Issue #51
Your weekly newsletter on women in tech, venture and entrepreneurship
This is issue No. 51. The last issue had a 61% open rate and the top two articles were:
Femstreet
Partnership Opportunities
🙋 Femstreet is maturing as a central hub for news on women in venture and female founders and got some got some big things in the works such as first regular meetups, and finding ways (online and off) to connect investors and female founders -- intelligently and often. Email for partnership inquiries and I will send you more reader stats (just hit send, it's already filled out).
Insights
From the Investor
Unsolicited Career Advice from Caye Hurtado, Investor at Balderton Capital Medium
Lead(H)er: Stephanie Manning, Director of Platform at Lerer Hippeau
Lerer Hippeau's Director of Platform Stephanie Manning shares how she got into venture, what goes into the VC platform role, how she thinks about fostering community for their portfolio. VentureFizz
How This Female Venture Capitalist Makes Her Investment Decisions
Andrea Hippeau, Principal at the early-stage venture capital fund Lerer Hippeau speaks about her career path, advice for female founders raising capital and how to encourage more women to become the decision-makers. Forbes
Fundraising in the US: The Founder’s Perspective
Part one explored the VC perspective. Here in part two Zoë Chambers of Octopus Ventures looks at the issue from the Founder’s point of view. Medium
Backstage Capital to launch an accelerator in four cities to promote underrepresented founders
Since its founding three years ago, venture firm Backstage Capital has been on a mission to prove that companies led by women, people of color, and LGBTQ founders are equally deserving of investment dollars. Earlier this year, the firm passed a critical milestone: 100 investments of $25,000 to $100,000, all directed toward underrepresented entrepreneurs—or “underestimated” entrepreneurs. The Backstage Accelerator, as the program has been named, will operate out of London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and a fourth city, to be determined by popular vote. TechCrunch
Inside the Mind of a NYC VC: Anna Garcia of Runway Venture Partners AlleyWatch
How Did I Get Here by Cyan Banister (Founders Fund)
Founders Fund Partner Cyan Banister shared her inspirational journey from a homeless teen at the age of 15 to now a venture capitalist who’s invested in startups like Uber, Thumbtack, SpaceX, Postmates, EShares, Affirm and Niantic. TechCrunch
Non-Fungible Tokens: Future Applications and Challenges by Julia Morrongiello, Investor at Point Nine Capital Medium
Version One Ventures Promotes Angela Tran Kingyens to General Partner versionone.vc
Why BBG Ventures Backs Female Founders
Susan Lyne, BBG Ventures founding partner, discusses Amazon.com Inc.'s $1 trillion market valuation and how BBG is tackling venture capital's diversity problem. Bloomberg
From the Operator
Women-only co-working space The Wing is launching an app to help its members stay connected
The co-working company created the app in partnership with Prolific Interactive to connect its members and keep them up to date on The Wing’s programming. For now, the app will only be available to paying Wing members. TechCrunch
Fairer Funding Now: new campaign highlights discrimination faced by female and minority founders in tech
Co-working space Huckletree is hoping to shine a light on the discrimination encountered during fundraising with its new campaign, Fairer Funding Now, backed by crowdfunding platform CrowdCube. The company interviewed around 200 founders in the UK and Ireland and found that around 16 per cent said they faced discrimination when seeking investment and a further 27 per cent said they knew a founder who had faced prejudice. Evening Standard
The Myth Of CEO Work-Life Balance by Amy Nelson, Founder of The Riveter Forbes
A Quora Session with Mathilde Collin, Co-founder and CEO of Front
Mathilde talks about the things she learned to make the fundraising process as efficient as possible (Front raised $66m in 5 days), some common mistakes startups make when they scale and what kind of marketing efforts did Front apply when growing from $0 MRR to $100k MRR. Quora
Fundraising While Pregnant: How to Raise $20 Million for Your Startup
Raising venture capital isn't all about your pitch. After juggling family, pregnancy, work and the biggest funding rounds of my career, I've realized that there's absolutely a formula to success. Entrepreneur
Girlboss’ and Nasty Gal’s Sophia Amoruso on picking yourself up after failure TechCrunch
New Cloud Unicorn: PagerDuty Scores $1.3 Billion Valuation In $90 Million Round
Female-led PagerDuty announced on Thursday it has raised $90 million in a round led by T. Rowe Price Associates and Wellington Management. VC investors Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners joined the round. Forbes
Research
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Women Supporting Each Other at Work HBR
Make Your Daughter Practice Math. She’ll Thank You Later.
The way we teach math in America hurts all students, but it may be hurting girls the most. The New York Times
The Top 10 Universities With The Most VC-Backed Female Entrepreneurs Forbes
You can download the entire report for free here
#BuiltbyWomen Europe
CrowdJustice is a London-Based crowdfunding platform that enables individuals, groups and communities to come together to fund legal action.
Oslo-based Iris.ai is an AI-powered science assistant to help anyone that wants to find related papers for an original research question.
CarboCulture is a Finnish startup making high-end carbon products from biomass & sequestering CO2.
Berlin-based Peppycorn Popcorn produces and sells light, vegan, gluten-free and handmade popcorn.
UK-based Moi-Même is a subscription box filled with luxury lifestyle and beauty gifts created by women.
📆 Events
Elizabeth Galbut from SoGal Ventures runs a free monthly Zoom webinar for people interested in working in venture capital. You can sign up for a slot by using her Calendly link
- September 13th in Berlin: The Sistership - Meet women in tech feat. Zalando and ReDI School - The Family
- September 17th in Stockholm: Startup Sweden Meetup with a focus on female founders
- September 18th in London: Deeptech Tuesday - Female Deeptech Founders
- September 27th in London: Mumpreneur & Female Entrepreneur Networking
- October 1st in London: Vestpod: Investing part II! The Female Only Workshop Night
- October 2nd in London: BeautyTech London: Beauty Founders (Treatwell) & Investors (Felix Capital) share their learnings
- October 4th in LA: FounderMade's Consumer Discovery Show - Get a 25% discount with the code FEMSTREET25
Voulez Monthly Pitch Clinic at Google Campus London: Are you an outstanding female founder? If so, then this is an opportunity to get feedback on your venture from a panel of experienced investors, as well as a chance to ask questions to industry experts. Hurry - applications close 20 September. Sign up now!
In case you missed it ...
Here are 536 women in the UK who could speak at your tech event.
Investor Insights
‘How valuable is your MBA?’ by Caye Hurtado of Balderton Capital
Tara Reeves of LocalGlobe shares What this VC has learned since coming back from maternity leave
Co-founder of Diversity VC shares her seed investing framework
10 British VCs To Start Sharing Diversity Data On All The Startups They Meet
Female Founders Insights
How to Secure VC Funding When You're the Only Woman in the Room
5 Entrepreneurs Reveal How They Acquired Their First 1000 Customers
What I wish I knew about fundraising as a first-time founder
Research
There are very real differences in how women and men (and VCs) view entrepreneurship
Finally, Evidence That Diversity Improves Financial Performance
Boston Consulting Group finds female-led startups raise less, earn more
Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note!
Until next Sunday,
Sarah
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