Imagine a world where every high-potential founder or founding team gets the funding and support they deserve.
We’ve all backed game-changing companies tackling the world’s most pressing challenges. With the right capital and resources, these innovators can scale their impact, accelerate growth, and drive real, lasting change while they deliver outsize returns for their investors.
At Beyond The Billion, we urge global leaders, investors, and organizations to move beyond the noise and recognize the undeniable power of investing in women leaders. Progress isn’t made through hesitation—it’s driven by bold, decisive action. Equitable investment isn’t just about fairness; it’s about fueling growth, innovation, and a more prosperous future for all. The stakes have never been higher. We remain steadfast in our vision of a world where merit rises, potential is unleashed, and progress is shared.
Teams of diverse founders (more than one gender and/or more than one race or ethnicity represented) create more innovation and, on average, better financial outcomes at venture-funded startups, including 30% higher multiples on invested capital (MOIC) when companies are acquired or go public, plus better valuations for startups with at least one female founder (63% better than all-male teams) and/or with at least one ethnically-diverse team member reporting to the CEO (65% better than all-white teams).
The data is undeniable: women consistently outperform. Yet, despite their proven results, they remain underfunded and undervalued—not just an injustice, but an economic failure for any economy seeking outsize growth and returns.
Recent rollbacks of initiatives designed to level the playing field threaten to stall both innovation and economic growth at a time when every country in the world needs it most.
At Beyond The Billion, having mobilized over $1 billion toward women-founded and co-founded companies, we’ve seen firsthand the extraordinary outcomes when female leaders get the capital they deserve. The numbers speak for themselves: investing in women isn’t charity—it’s a catalyst for business growth, economic prosperity, and global innovation.
Companies with women at the helm consistently deliver superior performance, with diverse leadership teams showing a 36% higher likelihood of profitability. These are not isolated results but consistent findings that demonstrate the tangible benefits of empowering more voices in leadership.
Women-founded companies are innovation powerhouses, yet they continue to operate with fewer resources. In a merit-based system, the tendency not to invest in women-founded firms is a glaring missed opportunity, costing businesses and economies growth that could otherwise be transformative.
As businesses face economic uncertainty, shifting workforces, and technological upheaval, success demands adaptability, innovation, and resilience. These are strengths that inclusive leadership fosters and businesses cannot afford to ignore.
Women innovators are solving some of the world’s toughest problems in every sector: AI, agriculture, business solutions, climate, education, healthcare, SaaS, and so much more. Funding is key to us all benefiting from their solutions.
Real change requires more than lip service—it demands accountability, measurable outcomes, and a commitment to embedding these principles into the core of business strategies.
A Call to Action
We at Beyond The Billion are proud to work with leaders in many sectors including finance, tech, philanthropy et al. We call on all leaders and investors to leverage their successful experience and reputation to achieve both alpha and a truly merit-based approach to VC investing for the benefit of all.
“It is now a well-known fact that diverse allocators tend to allocate more capital to women and diverse founders compared with non-diverse allocators. In my role as head of manager selection, we have focused on looking at the diversity of the investment managers who are allocating capital to women and diverse founders.
Our clients, both individual and institutional, are demanding greater transparency about how their capital is being allocated.
We are of course being driven by this demand, but also by our belief that it is important to:
1) Ensure that diversity across one’s portfolio not only relates to asset class and sector, but reflects the full universe of investable businesses;
2) Provide access to businesses that are transformative to our economies and communities;
3) Provide clients with access to the returns that women and diverse owned founders can generate.
To this end, we have doubled down on efforts to not only source investments that reflect Bank of America’s $250mm+ commitment to inclusive development, but have incorporated DEI criteria into our investment conviction in the managers in whom we entrust client capital.”
Together, we mobilized $1B+ into women-founded companies.
A chapter closes, but the work continues in new forms.
