Building a Target List of Women-Focused VCs

As more and more women join the venture industry we've seen well-deserved coverage of individuals and firms along with a variety of lists compiled by data providers and firms themselves, but still something is missing. During a conversation I had a few months back with Julie Castro Abrams she expressed her frustration, telling me, “we’ve never had this many women with this much experience, power and wealth, but only 1.4 percent of all asset managers are women and people of color. The number is so small that they had to combine those two groups!” Not only are women still underrepresented on the GP (and LP) side of venture capital, raising less than 2% of the $166 billion raised by venture firms last year, but I have yet to see a list focused on just women-led venture firms. For that reason, and because I've had the pleasure of speaking to many women in VC over the past year who deserve recognition, I've spent the past few months scouring SEC filings, press releases and news articles to compile a list of all of the women-led VC funds raising capital since the beginning of 2022. Based on my research, we've put together a list of 102 firms led by women that opened, partially closed or fully closed a venture fund since January 1, 2022. Included in our list is how much each fund raised, targeted, select LPs, targeted industries and stages, and a variety of other information about each firm. Venture Capital Journal has also created a dedicated homepage for all of our women-focused coverage, including the list we put together and a story I wrote based on data pulled from my findings. Huge thank you to Lawrence Aragon for helping me sift through all of the data and organize everything into a coherent story, Christopher Wood for cleaning up the massive excel files I sent him so they were ready to publish, and of course to the countless women VCs I've spoken with since I joined VCJ last summer. Read more on Venture Capital Journal. #venturecapital #womeninvc https://lnkd.in/g4Ms-MDD

If you are a female founder, chances are the odds are stacked against you. But how do you even the odds? With community, network, mentorship and surrounding yourself with the right people. 👇 I have compiled this resource to highlight available and dedicated support to female founders. 🏛️ 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 & 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 / 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 • Women in Innovation Awards (Innovate UK) • Women TechEU (EU) • EU Prize for Women Innovators • Women's Enterprise Scotland 💵 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐕𝐂 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 & 𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 • Female Founders Fund (FFF) • Astia • Alma Angels • Angel Academe - increasing female investment • Fund F • January Ventures • Pink Salt Ventures • Sie Ventures • Investing Women Angels (Scotland) • Women Backing Women (UKBAA)  • Coralus (SheEO) • Lifted Ventures 👯♂️ 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 & 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 • AllBright • Female Founders Rise • WEgate (EU) • Women’s Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) • everywoman  • WeAreNovi • Women In Business Network (WIBN) 🚀 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 & 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 • Barclays Eagle Labs Female Founder Accelerator • Hatch Enterprise UK Female Founders Incubator • Female Founders “Grow F” Accelerator • Women Startup Competition (WSC) • EIT Food EWA (Empowering Women in Agrifood)  • AccelerateHER • Grace - Accelerate Female Entrepreneurship • StepFWD (Romania) (Majority women-focused) 👩🏫 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 & 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 • MentorSET • Cherie Blair Foundation for Women Mentoring • AllBright Mentoring • EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women • Vital Voices VV Grow Fellowship • Ellevate Network • Lean In Circles __________________________ 😊 It certainly took me a hot minute to track all of this down, but we hope this helps! ♻️ Please do repost and share if you found this helpful! P.S. Who else have I missed that you would recommend?

Last week, I shared a list of VC funds that actually write checks to women founders. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s had a few too many funding conversations where the guy across the table asked questions they’d never dream of asking a man. Since then: • At least a dozen new funds have been suggested. • Some of my own investors kindly reminded me I forgot them (big whoops). • A lot of folks asked for international recs, or funds that don’t brand as “female-focused” but consistently back diverse founders. So I turned it into a living Google Doc. I’ve included a few of the funds that were namedropped in the comments, but I definitely didn’t catch all of them. 👉 https://ow.ly/4bJM50WswXB Add to it. Share it. The primary criteria for inclusion is that they have a dedicated focus on female or diverse founders, OR 25% or more of their portfolio investments are female-owned. Just… don’t abuse it. No spam or self-promo, please. On that note, make sure you add in at least one real female-owned investment example (Column G). I’ve set this doc up to auto-delete spam and any entries without Column G populated every 24 hours. Let’s keep it going!