Women & Wealth: Fueling women-led innovation at scale
Beyond The Billion, Vital Voices and Gobi Partners have partnered to engage our investor community and advance discussions and action around fueling women-led innovation and the funds investing in them!
We were thrilled to host our signature convening focused this time on “Women, Wealth & Legacy”— honing in on the impact we know women and the next generation of investors will have, and the transformative power of their capital.
Women’s economic power is on the rise in the United States
Today, women control an estimated $10 trillion in US household financial assets, a figure expected to grow to $30 trillion by 2030. Moreover, women are the primary breadwinners in 40% of American households, highlighting their significant influence in financial decision-making.
Despite these advancements, women entrepreneurs receive only a small fraction of venture capital funding—less than 3% goes to all-women teams. This underscores the critical need for initiatives like ours to support and empower women in business.
Riding the upcoming wave of generational wealth transfer, now is the best time to bridge the gap between high-net-worth women investors, influential capital allocators, and groundbreaking women entrepreneurs.
Some Key Takeaways:
The Opportunity of The Great Wealth Transfer
“The Great Wealth Transfer” is poised to begin, with the baby boomers – who own about half the country’s wealth – passing on $84 trillion through 2045. Experts project that younger generations such as Gen X and millennials will inherit $72 trillion of that total. Attendees discussed how as asset owners, they are already leveraging this opportunity to drive impact through their investments. Venture investing remains an attractive asset class to drive both returns & impact as discussed by investors in the room, with two notable examples by BTB Pledged Funds:
i. HopSkipDrive invested by Tracy Chadwell,1843 Capital
ii. Airwallex invested by Chibo Tang and Tom Tsao, Gobi Partners
The Need to Shift to “Legacy” vs “Fear-Based Planning”
Limited Partners (LPs) discussed how planning driven by fear can prevent future generations from building on past achievements and may even cause family conflicts. Behavioral studies indicate that fostering confidence and trust is a more effective approach for preparing the next generation to manage and grow wealth, and working together across generations is beneficial.
The Need to Reframe “Pattern-Matching”
An LP, now a GP shared how she realized what was important in ensuring women-led innovation continues to be invested in is to challenge the typical “pattern-matching” as part of the process. Rather, it was important to look at the “distance travelled” for the founder. Often, women and people of color have a more circuitous journey, and may not come from the perceived “pattern of success”. Capital allocators have an opportunity to level the playing field.
Introducing Term Limits as Investment Governance
A way to ensure more women can advance as checkwriters, is to instill term limits on investment committees. It is troubling to note how there are hardly term limits across investment committees, which is important for governance. Attendees shared how the dynamic within boards and committees shape who and what gets funded.
Drive Returns Through Diversity with Us #investinwomen
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Some moments from the event:
In Partnership with Vital Voices and Gobi Partners
About The Organizers
Vital Voices, for more than 25 years, Vital Voices Global Partnership has been investing in women leaders solving the world’s greatest challenges. They are “venture catalysts,” identifying those with a bold vision for change and partnering with them to make that vision a reality. They scale and accelerate their impact through long-term investments to expand the skills, connections, capacity, and visibility of women leaders.
Gobi Partners is a leading Asia-focused venture capital firm with US$1.6 billion in assets under management (AUM), headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. Founded in 2002, Gobi now has a network of 16 locations, raised 19 funds and invested in 400+ startups. The firm supports entrepreneurs from early to growth stages, with a particular focus on emerging markets. Gobi’s core mission includes empowering underserved entrepreneurs, promoting gender equality and circular economy initiatives, driving innovation in new markets and technologies, and nurturing entrepreneurial ecosystems. As a UN Global Compact Participant, Gobi aligns its strategies with universal principles on human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption.
Beyond The Billion is the world’s first and largest consortium of venture funds pledged to invest over $1Bn into women-founded companies. Beyond the Billion’s (BTB) first pledge campaign was launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women in October 2018 with an audacious goal of catalyzing $1 billion into the hands of women founders globally, addressing the gender venture investment gap where women were receiving only 2.2% of all venture capital funding. In under 2 years, $638 million of the first billion pledged was deployed by our partner funds into close to 800 women-founded companies, of which 11 have been recognized as unicorns— from Canva to EverlyWell. To continue to build on this momentum, we launched Beyond The Billion, to catalyze capital deployed to and with these venture funds, ensuring their continued capacity to invest by bridging LPs and GPs, building a community of institutional investors, sovereign funds, IFIs, DFIs, family offices, wealth managers and high net worth individuals; driving the agenda collectively.
