Live with Deborah Benton Founder & General Partner at Willow Growth Partners
Join CEO of Female Founder Collective, Alison Wyatt as she sits out with Deborah Benton for an in-depth conversation about the future of fundraising. As the former President & COO of Nasty Gal and current Founder and General Partner at Willow Growth Partners, Deborah has sat on both sides of the table. With this unique perspective, she is able to share industry secrets and trends that will help any founder looking to fundraise. From expected returns, common mistakes to avoid, and the future of fashion, CPG, and femtech, Deborah shares what it takes to drive growth in 2024.
MORE ABOUT YOUR HOST
Deborah is the Founder & General Partner at Willow Growth Partners. Willow provides early growth capital to entrepreneurs building the next generation of transformative consumer brands and the disruptive technologies that power them. In 2014, Deborah launched a family office investment vehicle focused on seed-stage consumer brands and enabling tech companies.
Prior to Willow, Deborah invested in 15 companies, and achieved seven liquidity events, realizing 2.6x the invested capital and significant unrealized gains, with the portfolio currently sitting at 10.6x MOIC. All remaining portfolio companies are active, healthy, and growing, providing significant unrealized gains. During this time, Deborah assumed a number of Advisory Board and Board of Director roles to support the successful growth and development of a number of her portfolio companies. A critical element of Deborah’s investment thesis is to leverage her 20+ years of operating experience by helping founders rationally, effectively and optimally scale their businesses.
Prior to investing, Deborah held a number of executive-level operating roles. From 2012 - 2014, she was President and Chief Operating Officer of Nasty Gal, an online women’s fashion brand, where she led the team that grew annual revenues from $20 M to almost $100 M in two years, and quickly built the infrastructure to support this meteoric growth.
Prior to this role, Deborah was the Chief Operating Officer at ShoeDazzle, an online women’s subscription shoe company, where she and the team built a powerful consumer brand and grew annual revenues to ~$85 M in 2 ½ years. With Kim Kardashian as a founder, ShoeDazzle was one of the original consumer brands to harness and leverage the power of social media and celebrity influencers. Earlier in her career, Deborah was the EVP of Inside Sales and Operations at Teleflora, where she managed a $100 M P&L and drove significant operational and supply chain efficiencies, improving profitability. After business school, Deborah began her career in management consulting, focusing primarily on data-driven strategic sourcing and cost rationalization.
Deborah holds a public Board Director role at Leaf Group (NYSE: LEAF). She is passionate about and actively involved in supporting and mentoring women founders and sits on the board of Women Founder Network in LA, an organization dedicated to providing promising female entrepreneurs access to capital, services, and mentorship.