Anthemis, Diversity VC and Ladies Who Launch Announce Female Founder Office Hours
The public outrage to systemic racial discrimination we have witnessed over the last couple of weeks has shown us the power of numbers. As the Venture Capital (VC) community responds, we know that diversity and inclusivity in our industry will not be solved with one fund, one investor or one initiative. We all have a role to play.
At Anthemis, we partnered with Barclays and launched the Female Innovators Lab (FIL) last year with the aim of supporting the pipeline of female entrepreneurial talent in the financial services sector and its agencies. We were founded in 2010 on three guiding principles: authentic collaboration, virtuous cycle outcomes, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
This is why we are excited to launch Female Founder Office Hours. Bringing together 30+ venture investors from across the US, this virtual event is something we have been working on for the past two months, inspired by Playfair Capital’s Female Founder Office Hours hosted in the UK. We are incredibly grateful to Playfair Capital for collaborating with us to bring Female Founder Office Hours across the pond! This support truly validates the power of a global collective as we all work together to combat statistics that can no longer be ignored.
In collaboration with Diversity VC and Ladies Who Launch, we will be hosting our first event on June 30. The event will begin with a kick-off from Anthemis, Diversity VC and Ladies Who Launch, leading into one-on-one sessions with participating founders each speaking with three different investors over a one hour time period. We are excited to connect founders and investors and provide a 1:1 forum to exchange ideas and build relationships.
As we shift to a mostly remote working world for now, the restrictions of being in the same city or physical location for the founders/investors are knocked on the head. As we have worked to organize this event over the past couple of weeks, from the support we received, it is evident that investors are eager and committed to keeping their doors open during these times. With this seismic shift beyond the physical epicenters of historically homogeneous networks, there is a massive opportunity to break down these barriers and to expand investment opportunities and connections to different geographies, more people of color, more women — overall to people from more diverse backgrounds.
Looking internally, 52 percent of our team at Anthemis are women, compared to an industry average of 27 percent. On the investing side of the house, 60 percent of the decision-makers on our investment team are women, compared to an industry average of 16 percent (Diversity VC, 2019). When we look at our portfolio companiesm 17 percent of our founders are women.
While we recognize that we have taken consistent steps over the past decade to look at our own internal numbers and at the diversity of our own portfolio, there is still a long way to go for us and our industry. It starts with authentic collaboration and education, and creating an environment for virtuous cycle outcomes. We know that the Female Founder Office Hours is just one event (for now 😉), but we are encouraged by the network effects of events such as these and the potential opportunities that will arise post-office hours.
We have incredible investors taking part, who share Anthemis’ excitement for the day’s event. We will introduce you to the investors over the course of this month. In the meantime, if you know or are a female founder interested in joining, please apply here!
Here is the full list of participating funds and investors:
Acceleprise — Pranavi Cheemakurti
Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments — Rachel Lauren
Cambrian Biopharma — Juliette Han
City Light Capital — Sarah Millar
Clocktower Ventures — Adriana Saman
Collaborative Fund — Lily Bernicker
Founder Collective — Parul Singh
F-Prime Capital — Hannah Arnold
Halogen Ventures — Ashley Ramirez
Hearst — Lisa Burton and Kunal Mehta
Laconia Capital — Geri Kirilova
Lerer Hippeau — Andrea Hippeau
M3 Advisors — Stephanie Marshall
Mindset Ventures — Jules Miller
Playfair Capital — Henrik Wetter Sanchez and Alexandra Baranowski
SoftBank Investment Advisers — Mary Miller and Catherine Soler
The Helm — Lindsey Taylor Wood
The Impact Seat — Barbara Clarke
The Path Ahead — Pat Hedley
The Venture Collective — Cat Hernandez and Stephanie Sarelakos
Tribeca Ventures — Nitya Rajendran
The Female Innovators Lab (FIL) by Barclays and Anthemis invests in pre-seed and seed female-founded fintech companies. FIL is a New York City-based studio dedicated to cultivating entrepreneurial talent in women from all sides of the financial services ecosystem. The Lab’s mission is to identify female founders at the idea stage of their journey and match them with the resources and mentorship required to develop a company and bring it to its first round of fundraising.
Diversity VC is a non-profit partnership promoting diversity in venture capital (VC). VC is funding the future. The decisions made by VCs filter through to the whole community and we have a responsibility to ensure the right decisions are being made. We need the industry to be free from bias.
