Femstreet Issue No. 70 - Weekly Newsletter on Women in Tech, Entrepreneurship and Diversity in Venture Capital
Issue #70
Your Weekly Newsletter on Women in Tech, Entrepreneurship and Diversity in Venture Capital
AllRaise founders speak with Bloomberg's Emily Chang
This is issue No. 70 and the last issue had a 46% open rate. The top two articles were:
In December, Diversity VC, in partnership with Atomico, launched the Diversity & Inclusion guide, a practical and hands-on guidebook for entrepreneurs to help them build companies with diversity and inclusion at their core.
In collaboration with Diversity VC and Atomico, Femstreet is hosting a breakfast on the 7th of February at 8am in London for a casual discussion and to celebrate the launch of the guidebook. We have reserved a five more spots for Femstreet readers. All founders are welcome to join and can RSPV here, but be quick!
The Pill Club raises $51M as VCs find new opportunities in women’s health. Oracle Corp. shorted women and minority workers $400 million in wages by paying them less than other employees. HBR finds gender pay gaps shrink when companies are required to disclose them. BlueRun Ventures closes on $130M, promotes Cheryl Cheng to GP. Female co-founded Confluent reaches $2.5 Billion valuation three years after hiring its first sales rep. The Dorm Room Fund announced the Blueprint Project for Founders of Color in New York City. UK startup veteran and investor Wendy Tan White joins Alphabet’s X as Vice President. Women need to network differently than men to succeed, study finds.
There are not enough female VCs—that much is known. Unfortunately, there are even fewer Latina VCs. These Latina VCs are optimistic about opportunities in their Industry.
AllRaise founders Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan, Kirsten Green, founding partner at Forerunner Ventures, and Aileen Lee, founder and partner at Cowboy Ventures, discuss the need for more women in venture capital, how trade tariffs are impacting venture capital spending, and Facebook's future leadership.
How do Seniors they purchase differently? Who is making the decision? Nicole Quinn, Parter at Lightspeed Venture Partners on the industry that technology forgot. And Ashley Brasier of LVP shares a piece on the huge opportunity for consumer businesses to leverage technology to provide solutions specifically tailored to Middlers.
It’s an exciting time to invest in extraordinary female talent and the Female Founders Fund proves exceptional returns can be generated by investing in companies founded by women. What are they up to next? Anu and Sutian, partners at Female Founders Fund, on why investing in female talent matters.
As part of our interview series with Negotiating the Terms, Femstreet published a Q&A with Female Founders Fund’s Director of Community, Emily St. Denis.
Soraya Darabi, GP of Trail Mix Ventures, on why Wellness is the key to becoming a more successful business person.
Kevin Smith and Josh Brewer, co-founders of Abstract on building a modern team in Inclusion is a choice - How you build is just as important as what you’re building.
Tech founder at 45? Then you are average. Despite the fact that tech founders have an average age of 40, ageism is the second most common form of discrimination in the industry.
5 women entrepreneurs on the business pivot that changed everything. From expanding into a new market before you’re ready to completely changing your core mission, you’ll feel inspired by these daring women who pivoted their companies and changed everything.
Marwa Nur Muhammad, Co-founder of Trance on how to keep costs low and increase runway for a small startup.
Femstreet reader Abadesi of Product Hunt shares how she went from being an intern at the Financial Times to featuring on their list of Top 100 Influential Tech Leaders.
Fear of Failure: Are we capable of rising from the ashes? On the extreme resiliency of a human being and the real challenge of being an entrepreneur.
Kate Hofman, GrowUp Urban Farms, on raising £1.9m Pre-Launch and Pregnant, innovation grants, and the importance of financial forecasts.
Taruna Manchanda of Swiggy on the Product Management skills NO ONE talks about.
As Bumble announces Serena Williams as its new global advisor, founder Whitney Wolfe Herd tells us why the tennis champion is her heroine.
Whitney Wolfe Herd: Why there is no stronger woman than Serena Williams. | Harper's Bazaar
Are women represented in the maker community?
A member of the community at Product Hunt recently sought out to answer this question using their API. The result is Femake, a collection of data on female makers, where a few things immediately jump out:
The percentage of female makers (13.9% in 2018) was actually less than the tech industry overall.
The percent of solo female makers (9.3% in 2018), ie: women submitting on their own, is even lower.
Average stats across upvotes, comments, products launched, and % launching multiple times are all lower than male counterparts.
There’s a lot of work to do, but there’s also a lot to celebrate. Have you heard of Mathilde Collin? Steph Liverani? Katie Zhu? If not, you should probably check them out because they are some of the top women makers of all time. Here is the rest of the breakdown for female makers in 2018 and here’s all the amazing things they’re building.
Rowse is a Paris-based beauty company developing products with raw, natural and healthy ingredients for your skin & hair. ROWSE’s first body oil is a blend of super powerful raw plants including Rhodiola, Siberian Pine, Borage and Almond.
London-based PlanSnap is a social planning platform that gets friends together for any kind of social occasion, fast - even if your friends don't have the app.
Danish-founded Humio built a platform to enable live system observability through fast, scalable and efficient log data management. Humio just raised $9 million in a funding round led by Accel.
UK-based Labrador is a smart energy switching start-up that develops a device that plugs into a home broadband router and automatically switches supplier when cheaper deals become available.
Jan 29th in NYC What the fund?! by Sogal - Get your free ticket with the code SoGalFem
Jan 29th in London Getting started: Investing! The Female Only Workshop Night by Vestpod
Jan 30th in Berlin The State of European Tech /w Atomico, FCG, omni:us, Balderton Capital and The Family
Jan 31st in Stockholm Female Founder Breakfast
Jan 31st in London #MovingForward Breakfast at Entrepreneur First
Feb 4th in London Learn with Leika #2 - Monthly mentoring for female engineers
Feb 5th in London BeautyTech London #2 - Beauty founders and investors share their learnings
Feb 7th in London The art of launching a business
Feb 18th in London European Tech - Wake Up! A discussion with Pip Jamieson, Check Warner and Tom Wehmeier
February 27th in London Apply for the Allbright Pitch Day
Apply for the Women in LawTech mentorship programme as mentor or mentee here.
#ChangeTheRatio - A series featuring underrepresented people in tech looking for jobs.
Download the Diversity and Inclusion toolkit for entrepreneurs.
Get a blueprint for building a diverse workforce.
Here are 582 women in the UK who could speak at your tech event.
👉 Access the full list of the top Femstreet resources here.
👉 Access the database of female founders (featured in Femstreet) here.
Partnership Opportunities.
Whether you're a VC fund, accelerator or a founder, email me for collaboration inquiries.
Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note!
See you next Sunday,
Sarah