Elizabeth Davis of Anthemis: Why We Need More Women Founders & Here Is What We Are Doing To Make That Happen
Encourage girls and young women to start thinking about entrepreneurship early
When I was a kid I grew up in a household with my parents starting and launching their own business, Montana Investment Advisors. From a young age, I saw what it was like to start a company, the importance in finding a complimentary partner and the hard work it takes to make your company successful (my Mom would come home in the morning and bring us donuts after having worked through the night). It showed me what it was like to start a company and my family encouraged me to start my own one day.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth Davis.
Elizabeth Davis is an Investor at Anthemis, an early stage venture capital firm, investing in female founders in fintech in the pre-seed and seed stages. Prior to joining Anthemis, Elizabeth served as a Vice President of Worn, a mission-driven creative and digital agency, where she led strategic partnerships working with female founders, was a Co-Founder at ON PURPOSE, a purpose consulting firm, and worked at The Coca-Cola Company in Global Sustainability. Elizabeth serves on the Advisory Board for The University of Notre Dame College of Arts & Letters and The Vinetta Project, has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Originally from Montana, I grew up in a household with two entrepreneurs, my parents. They had started a money management business when I was a kid and I saw firsthand the highs and lows of what it meant to start your own company. Fast forward to college, I was incredibly interested in “solving third-world nutrition” — a pretty lofty aspiration for a junior in college — so I tried every way to make an impact — from working on a sustainable cattle ranch in Pony, MT to understand where sustainable beef can come from to working on Capitol Hill. During these twists and turns, I realized I wanted to make a “big impact,” and thought one of the best ways to do so would be to work for a global company, so I went to work at The Coca-Cola Company on their Global Sustainability team. While I was at Coca-Cola, I spent time in India, China and Turkey and became enthralled in the work that we were doing to help women entrepreneurs around the globe. I had such a strong pull from working with those women that I decided to leave the comforts of a cushier corporate role, with a clear path forward, to become a Co-Founder of a purpose consulting firm with the “Mother of Cause Marketing,” Carol Cone. We worked with a variety of firms on how they could authentically incorporate purpose into their work. This was both challenging and rewarding and opened my eyes first hands to the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship. While I was helping start this company, I met the Founder of Worn, a mission-driven creative and digital agency focused on female founders and fell in love with helping founders build their business so left my company to join Worn.
At Worn, I was working with founders who were just launching their businesses, to established organizations like the City of New York who were building programs for an entire city of women. The commonality that I saw across so many of these incredible women, was a struggle to raise venture capital funding, and a lack of transparency in the process. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to be on the other side of the table, driving capital to more women, and bringing more transparency to the investment process, so decided to go back to business school and pursue a career in venture capital.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
There have been a lot of interesting moments of my career but one that I think back to was when I was working at The Coca-Cola Company and we had traveled to India to see our work with women entrepreneurs. While we were in Jaipur, we met with this woman Anam, who looked like she was little more than 12 (but found out she was 18) and asked her why she was starting her own business and not in school. She said, “I started my own business so that my two younger sisters can go to school and have the life that I was never able to.” Both a heartbreaking and inspiring story but one I always think about in the impact and importance we can each have in one other’s lives and in our community.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I had SO many mistakes when I first started but one I think back to and laugh is when I had an internship with PepsiCo my junior year in college. My first day I was wearing a navy-blue suit and a pin-striped pink blouse. I had bought a cappuccino for the train from New York City to Purchase and decided to take the top off to not get my teeth dirty. Being from Montana, I hadn’t spent a ton of time on trains so didn’t realize that sometimes they can have a jarring stop. Out of nowhere we stopped, and I spilled the coffee all over my pink blouse. This sweet old woman was next to me looking horrified and I started laughing. Luckily, once I buttoned my suit you couldn’t see the stains, but I did smell like milk all day. All this to say, keep the top on your coffee (or bring an extra shirt your first day!)
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I have been incredibly fortunate to have had so many incredible mentors along the way. One of them that took me under her wing is Lisa Borders. Lisa and I worked together at The Coca-Cola Company when she was leading The Coca-Cola Company Foundation and I was working in our Chief Sustainability Officer’s office. Lisa and I had worked together on a couple of projects for the sustainability office and she was traveling around the world to visit the different communities that Coca-Cola had supported. I wanted to understand the impact that Coca-Cola was making and so asked my Manager at the time if there was any way I could travel internationally to see our work and she recommended speaking with Lisa. I asked Lisa and she said, “Sunshine (her nickname for me), I’m going to India & China in a month, come with me!” The trip was life changing. And the biggest impact was that Lisa has truly become a part of my family. She is even going to be the officiant at our wedding next summer!
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I was actually a Great Books major in college, so it is difficult for me to choose just one however the one that I re-read between every career change is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It always feels like it puts life into perspective and focuses on what is truly important.
Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?
When I was a kid, my father always said, “To find your passion and do it in the service of others.” As you can imagine, a 5-year-old kid doesn’t totally know what that means so I was always trying to figure out what I was most passionate about and how I could truly make an impact. 25+ years later, looking back at my career, I’ve realized how important that quote has been in leading me to integrate impact in every career decision I have made.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I feel enormously fortunate to have had all the life experiences I have had in my career and continue to prioritize and focus on the bigger impact that I am making at my job, in my community and in the world. Whether that is driving more capital to women through investing, getting in the weeds with founders working on their brand redesign, or talking with women entrepreneurs in China about the transition from rural to urban living, I hope to make the world a better place.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Lack of access to capital and mentorship.
Can you share with our readers what your firm is doing to help empower women to become founders?
I work at Anthemis, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage fintech companies. The fund that I specifically sit on is called The Female Innovators Lab by Barclays and Anthemis that drives capital to female founders in fintech in the pre-seed and seed stages. The fund was started in late 2019 as we wanted to make a bigger commitment investing in female founders and help founders throughout their earliest stages of their company.
This might be intuitive to you but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Earlier this year I wrote two articles on the gender wealth gap: “Why We Need More Women to Invest and to Invest in More Women” and “Why We Need to Equalize Equity Ownership & Increase Board Representation.” Both articles highlight that currently women own just 32 cents for every dollar a man owns, and Black and Latinx women own just pennies and over the past 200+ years, thousands of companies have gone public on the New York Stock Exchange (or NASDAQ), yet only 20 of those that are currently public were founded and led by women. The lack of female-led public companies and Fortune 500 companies starts at the earliest stages with less than 3 percent of all venture funding going to female-only founded companies. We need more women to start more companies, increase equity ownership in companies, take more companies public and reduce the gender wealth gap.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Can you please share 5 things that can be done or should be done to help empower more women to become founders? If you can, please share an example or story for each.
Encourage girls and young women to start thinking about entrepreneurship early
When I was a kid I grew up in a household with my parents starting and launching their own business, Montana Investment Advisors. From a young age, I saw what it was like to start a company, the importance in finding a complimentary partner and the hard work it takes to make your company successful (my Mom would come home in the morning and bring us donuts after having worked through the night). It showed me what it was like to start a company and my family encouraged me to start my own one day.
Build bridges between founders and funders to understand the fundraising process
I am constantly amazed at the lack of information and transparency that can exist in the investment process for founders. If you’re a founder, look for an investor that is targeting the same stage, sector and that doesn’t have any competitive portfolio companies. I have seen so many “passes” because founders reach out to investors who don’t invest in their stage or sector.
Host workshops that are actually helpful in helping women founders build their business
This past spring, we hosted a workshop called Bringing Your Idea to Life in partnership with the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. The feedback after the workshop was amazing. The founders had a much better understanding of their customer problem, solution, key metrics they should track, unique value proposition, potential revenue streams and costs, and target audience.
Encourage LP’s to invest in venture capital funds that prioritize investing in diverse founders
Without funding, we couldn’t invest in more women founders, so encourage Limited Partners (LP’s) that you know to invest in funds that have a focus and priority in investing in women and diverse founders.
Be a Mentor.
There are so many ways to be a sounding board for those who are thinking about starting a company or getting into venture. I had the opportunity to be a mentor for Future VC, The BLCK VC Path Program in partnership with Lerer Hippeau and Anthemis and am currently mentoring a female founder in the HR tech space. If you are serious about helping women founders, ask them how you can help.
Make Connections
One of my favorite parts of my career has been connecting people that I think could be helpful for each other. If you know a female founder who is thinking about starting a business and know someone who would be a good connection for her, make that connection.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would want to see the amount of capital invested in women founders go from 2.2% to over 50%. I want to make it commonplace to invest in great female founders, just as it is to invest in great male founders.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
YES! Too many to count. I would absolutely love to have lunch with Melinda Gates. I have been so inspired by her and how she built her career and the impact she is making through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and now with Pivotal Ventures. Would love to see how I could help support the work that she does, especially with investing in more women.
