Bridging the Gender Venture Gap at SXSW

LIMITED PARTNERS JOIN THE BILLION DOLLAR FUND FOR WOMEN™ AT NEW EVENT SERIES

8 MARCH 2019, AUSTIN (US)- The Billion Dollar Fund for Women™ (“TBDFWomen”), a global consortium of venture funds tackling the gender funding gap, has surpassed the US$680mn mark, reaching another key milestone since announcing its launch October 2018 at the annual World Bank Meetings. This achievement highlights the commitment and great work of a range of venture funds from around the world dedicated to gender parity in funding early-stage women-founded companies.

The news was announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas by Co-Founders and Managing Partners, Shelly Porges and Sarah Chen, of TBDFWomen on Friday, March 8th as they kicked off The Billion Dollar Breakfast™ series. “As we continue to build momentum with our venture funds, we now begin phase two of our work in bridging the gap between our partner funds and limited partners who would invest into these venture funds –i.e institutional investors, pension funds, family offices and wealth managers seeking to diversify their portfolios,” says Chen.

Porges added: “It is especially important today given the enormous wealth transfer that is happening – millennials are set to inherit US$30 trillion in the next thirty years, and women in the US are set to control two thirds of wealth. These two groups are demanding more, including a more diversified and impact driven portfolio- money managers have to stay ahead of the game.” 

Chen added: “Importantly, it is not for the sake of diversity alone. Recent research has shown that women-founded companies (“WFC”), those with diverse teams deliver a 63% higher return[1] compared to male-only teams. We are asking these prospective LPs, who traditionally carry a conservative mandate, to consider investing into these dedicated venture funds so they too can benefit from the greater returns that are provided by women-led and diverse founding teams. The data points all tell us one story – investing in women, is just good business.” 

Utilizing the SxSW platform where innovators, investors and other changemakers congregate every year, True Wealth Ventures, a TBDFWomen partner fund, have partnered to host TBDFWomen’s first Billion Dollar Breakfast event, on International Women’s Day.

“True Wealth Ventures was very quick to pledge our VC fund’s capital to this timely effort as we are 100% committed to exclusively investing in companies with at least one woman founder or senior executive on the early stage team. Our investment thesis is a financial one: women-led companies significantly outperform. Women entrepreneurs are an extreme market blindspot, and The Billion Dollar Fund for Women is bringing global attention to the need and the opportunity to apply more institutional capital to the women entrepreneurs solving some of the world’s greatest challenges,” says Sara Brand, founding partner of True Wealth Ventures.

Tom Meredith, former MD at Dell Ventures and current Senior Partner in Brightstar Capital Partners, a middle market private equity firm based in New York, delivered a powerful keynote highlighting his experiences in investing in women. “Over the course of my 35-year career, I’ve consistently seen how women continue to excel in leadership, in the boardroom and in building companies. Investing in women is not just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do,” says Tom.

“TBDFWomen is a consortium of venture funds with each venture fund retaining its independence, designating the amount of its pledge, and managing and sourcing its own deal flows to fulfill the pledges made to invest in WFCs. Ours is an effort to encourage increased investments into WFCs by inspiring and strengthening the venture funds that do this important work. We aim to attract investments into the venture funds by institutional and other investors looking to invest with this kind of a gender-lens and reaping the rewards reflected in recent research,” says Porges. “As we like to say, when you invest in women, you’re in good company.”

 

The next Billion Dollar Breakfast™ is set to take place in New York later this month, and will be hosted across the globe throughout the year.

Interested individuals can learn more about the work and opportunities of TBDFWomen on: www.beyondthebillion.com

 

The Billion Dollar Fund List of Venture Fund Partners as of March 8th, 2018:  

$100+ Million Funds*:

  • The ArcView Venture Fund
  • Astia Fund
  • Different Funds
  • Fusion Fund
  • Gobi Partners
  • Golden Gate Ventures
  • Rethink Impact
  • Springboard Growth Capital

 

<$100 Million Funds*:

  • AmplifyHer Ventures
  • Backstage Capital
  • Blue Startups
  • Cycle Capital
  • Chloe Capital
  • Ecofuel Fund
  • Elevate Ventures
  • Endeavor Catalyst
  • Exponential Creativity Partners
  • Fund 1517
  • Golden Seeds Fund
  • Green Cow Venture Capital
  • Grit Labs
  • Marigold Capital
  • Mindshift Capital
  • Minerva Capital
  • Patamar Capital
  • Pique Ventures
  • Portfolia
  • Quantius
  • SoGal Ventures
  • TEJA Ventures
  • True Wealth Ventures

 

*this refers to size of fund NOT pledge to TBDFWomen

 

[1] http://10years.firstround.com/

About The Billion Dollar Fund For Women

The Billion Dollar Fund for Women (“TBDFWomen“) is a global consortium of venture funds pledged to increase their investment in women-founded companies. Kicking off with a global offline and online campaign, TBDFWomen seeks to change the paradigm by catalyzing a larger game of funding women who are leading the pack in entrepreneurship.

More information: https://beyondthebillion.com

 

About True Wealth Ventures

True Wealth Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund for women with ideas to change the world. Founded by Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp, the fund focuses on women-led companies in the consumer health and sustainability sectors. Companies founded and led by women have consistently demonstrated stronger returns than the market but are still under-represented as a share of VC investments, and female founders are uniquely positioned to solve environmental and human health challenges given that women make 85% of all consumer purchasing and 80% of healthcare decisions. True Wealth Ventures is one of few women-led early-stage VC funds in the country that is also focused on female entrepreneurs and the only one based in Texas.

For more information, visit http://www.truewealthvc.com.

 

 

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Beyond The Billion (The Billion Dollar Fund For Women) Copyright © 2018 - 2024

TBDF Ventures LLC (TBDFV), the organizer of Beyond The Billion (BTB), is a company serving the global consortium of investors pledged to invest beyond $1bn collectively into women-founded technology companies and funds and firms that invest in them. BTB builds on the success of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, the initial campaign co-founded by our founders. BTB is not a venture fund, an investment bank, a broker-dealer, investment clearinghouse, or an investment adviser, but rather a forum in which investors may be educated on aspects of investment and business, as well as introduced to companies for possible investment, in particular, those led by women. Each investor and allocator pledged to BTB’s mission is responsible for his or her own investment decisions, and neither TBDFV nor BTB recommends companies or financial products for investment. Participating funds may be highlighted to various institutional and other investors and managers, with the aim of catalyzing capital towards women-founded companies; but are not guaranteed allocations from any specific fund. The Founders of TBDFV and BTB may hold interests directly or indirectly in featured funds and associated companies. Information is obtained from participant funds, believed to be reliable, but is in no way guaranteed by TBDFV or BTB. No guarantee of any kind is implied or possible where projections of future conditions are attempted.