The Emotional Side of Venture Investing - How Do Investors Evaluate Female Founding Teams?
The Startup Station and StartupSchool.NYC proudly present the first joint event for early-stage female founders preparing for or going through fundraising.
Special Guest: Jeanne M. Sullivan, Investor, Advisor, Speaker, with over 25 years in investing experience.
In a direct quote from Ruben Dominguez from Mundi Ventures:
“In the VC community, it is often said that the founding team is the most important aspect of an early stage venture.
While products pivot, go-to-market strategies evolve, and customers come and go, the founders are the most consistent factor in the startup journey and are consequently a crucial parameter in the due diligence equation.
Despite the analytical nature of VCs, the process of evaluating a team has remained emotional and often led by bias.”
Female founders face additional challenges in raising capital. According to the recently released Dropbox DocSend #FundingDivide2024 report, in 2023 female teams took 65-75% longer to fundraise, raised least amounts of capital, and asked for less money. In our experience, they also set less ambitious goals than their male counterparts which leads to VCs scrutinizing their business models more, as is shown in the DocSend Data.
In this chat, Victoria Yampolsky and Mark Gold, two long time entrepreneurs who have worked with hundreds of founders and helped them raise millions in venture capital, will discuss:
The Founder's Mindset: Learn about the personal characteristics investors look for in female founders and why this process is often subjective and driven by a "gut" feeling.
Bias Navigation: Get informed which questions investors ask to evaluate teams so that you are more successful in navigating subconscious biases in the VC’s due diligence process.
Get prepared: Discover what you can do to improve your chances of successful fundraising and building a great company.
SPECIAL GUEST: Jeanne Sullivan, a veteran investor with 25 years of venture capital investing experience, will share her remarks.
SPEAKERS BIOS:
Jeanne M. Sullivan – Investor, Advisor, Speaker - is passionate about delivering ideas – information – and inspiration to entrepreneurs and is a fierce advocate for supporting women investors and entrepreneurs. Sullivan is the CIO of Arcview Ventures, building investment platforms under the Arcview banner and Co-Founder of the Arcview Collective Fund. She is a sought-after industry speaker on how to get funded in tech and on the cannabis sector - its complex (and ridiculous set of regulations).
Jeanne has been a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School and is an Athena Entrepreneur Fellow for Barnard College. She also served many years on the Board of Trustees of the New York Hall of Science and on the Global Board of Trustees of Astia, an organization that funds high-growth women entrepreneurs.
VICTORIA YAMPOLSKY is a serial entrepreneur, strategic CFO advisor for numerous early-stage start-ups and expert in financial modeling and valuation. She’s a passionate advocate for female founders and fair access to capital for all.
As the President and Founder of The Startup Station, a strategic CFO advisory firm and financial education platform for startups and small businesses, she has collaborated with over 150 founders across 15 industries, assisting them in raising more than $50M in venture capital funding. Hundreds of entrepreneurs worldwide took The Startup Station’s courses on accounting, financial modeling, valuation and startup finance.
Victoria is also CEO and Founder of Female Founder Mental Gym, a new non-profit groundbreaking global resilience-building program for female-led ventures.
Before venturing into entrepreneurship, Victoria spent nearly a decade on Wall Street in Deutsche Bank Research and IT Consulting at CapGemini.
MARK GOLD is an award-winning managing director who has built a $450m portfolio of early-stage startups from scratch, for The City of New York. Over 20 years of startup marketing experience.
Advised the U.S. State Department, Universities and Fortune 500 on innovation, technology and venture capital.
Former Tech Advisor to Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, current advisor on digital transformation at Gracie Mansion Conservancy, and co-founder of StartupSchool.NYC