Honoring Women’s History Month by Investing in Women Founders & Funders

 March 2025 eNews

In sailing there’s a term called luffing. It’s when the sails of the boat start to flap loosely, caused by a drop in pressure or a change in the direction of the wind. The boat momentarily loses its forward momentum and starts to drift.

Luffing was the word that came to mind after reading Pitchbook’s recently released annual report on VC investments in women founders for 2024. The stats are sobering. As Pitchbook’s editors stated, “there is catching up to do on both sides of the table.” Read the report.

For women founders, deal count was down in 2024 for the third consecutive year, including for mixed-gender teams. And while the amount of funding rose considerably—more than 27% over 2023—it was concentrated in a smaller number of companies (mirroring the trend across all US deals).

There were some upsides: Larger check sizes. Lower burn rates. More female-founded companies reached venture-growth stages. Rising valuations across all stages. And 13 newly minted female-founded unicorns that crossed $1B in valuation. While there is volatility and uncertainty in the economy right now, there is also a record high amount of uncommitted capital just waiting for calmer seas.

Sailors know that luffing is usually temporary, and can be fixed by trimming the sails or adjusting direction to catch the wind again and continue moving forward.

What continues putting the wind in our sails is the recent closing of more funds led by women and diverse founders.

Cherryrock Capital and Ulu Ventures are just two we’re an LP in.

We’re also an LP in Monarch Collective, which launched in 2023 and invests exclusively in women’s sports. Monarch just announced that it’s upped the size of its first fund from $150M to $250M.

To date, Monarch is a minority investor in three National Women’s Soccer League teams, including the Angel City FC, which has the highest valuation on record for any professional women’s sports team. Clearly, we’re big fans!

Fact is, there is more momentum than ever for closing the funding gap for women founders. This year, we’ll continue championing women in three areas:

*Continue making direct investments in female founded and co-founded startups. We remain steadfast in our commitment to invest in and help women-led teams build and scale the next generation of market leaders—in AI, health and wellness, fintech, enterprise, and consumer brands.

*Advocate for strategies that attract, hire and retain more women in decision making roles. About 17% of check writers at VC firms over $50M AUM are women, and just 19.5% at smaller firms, according to the Pitchbook report. It takes a few years to climb that ladder and so the more women there are in the pipeline, the more female representation among the decision makers will happen in the next five to 10 years. (Katherine was on a recent panel with Emerson Collective’s Fern Mandelbaum addressing just that issue.)

*Expand the ecosystem. As an LP in nearly 30 emerging funds led by women and underrepresented managers, we will continue joining forces with other investors to steer more capital into the hands of women. We’ll also continue cultivating more high net worth investors to invest in women founders as a viable asset class. With the anticipated $34 trillion wealth transfer into the hands of women over the next decade, women have the potential to drive a renaissance in female entrepreneurship and innovation.

Read the complete issue of our latest eNews for more about what we’ve been up to in Q1 2025.