Monique Woodard: Cake Ventures
Monique doesn’t know it but I first heard about her during an Ellen Pau interview in February of 2016 (or at least that’s what I wrote in my CRM). It wasn’t until the summer of 2017 at Jason Calacanis’ Angel Summit that I had a chance to be a fan girl in person. And become friends.
Monique is smart, deliberate, and thoughtful in how she approaches early stage investing. She is able to see the opportunities where others struggle to imagine the possibilities.
She honored me by being one of my first Piloting Your Life podcast guests in September 2017. She talked about her non-traditional path into venture capital and how it serves her in how she views the world and what she looks for in startups to invest in. She also talked about why she hates to be called a unicorn (I sent her a unicorn card for her birthday because I am a snot! Sorry, not sorry).
In December 2017, Monique joined me at the Slush conference in very cold Helsinki, Finland (who the hell goes to Helsinki in winter? us apparently)to discuss the shifting demographics and the need to shift investing along with them. I moderated the panel where Monique and I were joined by Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures (our token male on the panel). See Monique in action here.
What is she doing now? As she talks about in a recent CareByDesign podcast interview, Monique is raising a fund to invest in early stage startups focused on changing demographics. Monique says that emerging demographics are the new emerging markets. This could not be more timely.
The exciting opportunities exist in:
- An aging population whose size and spending power has created unique needs across categories like care and social isolation, preventative health, and late-life financial services.
- Increased spending power of women. Companies in technology categories like direct-to-consumer, digital health, and the many ways women save, spend, and invest money.
- The shift to majority-minority and the changing technology consumption habits and needs that impact social, financial access, and the future of work.
Per Monique, these three groups of emerging users represent a collective $18T in annual market share.
I am thrilled to see this as Cake’s investment thesis aligns with what I want to see in the world. We need more investors like Monique, and more money in the hands of investors like Monique, to really shift the dollars and what gets produced (aka funded) in the world, just as we talked about in December 2017.
“We’re not going to wait around for someone to chase us. We’re going to create our own funds.” — Monique Woodard, July 2020, CareByDesign podcast.
