🎙️ EP01: The Gender Funding Gap & the $5 Trillion Opportunity | InvestHer Podcast

Investor Podcast is for you, the female founder who has a product, a service, or a message that you believe in and need to get funded. Or for you, the investor who wants to learn more about the huge untapped investment opportunity that gives you a higher return— women entrepreneurs. My name is Anne Ravanona. I'm an entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and women's advocate, and I'm passionate about helping women entrepreneurs get funded. In each episode, we'll take a behind-the-scenes look into real-world funding tactics and strategies to help you get the funding you need faster. Let's put the fun into funding. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's get started. Welcome to our very first episode. So what are you going to learn in this episode? Well, we're going to tell you about the format for our podcasts moving forward, how you can find your why, and how inspiration can come from anywhere. You learn about what's my why and how I found it and why I created my company, Global InvestHer. What's the funding gender gap and how big is it? And what's the latest research to understand how big an opportunity we're talking about when it comes to changing the world, basically, investment opportunity. And I'll also be sharing what I think needs to change in the world of funding for us all to be able to seize this opportunity. Ready to get started? Now let's go! So welcome, welcome to episode 1 of this podcast. I am absolutely delighted to be with you all today, and you know, this is going to be the start of a really incredible journey together, and I'm excited to get it started. So just a reminder, if you haven't heard our trailer little bit earlier on. This podcast is for female founders who want to learn about funding and get funded faster. They want the practical tactics and tips from the people who know. And it's also for investors and anybody else who wants to learn about the world of funding from a female perspective, from what it's like for women entrepreneurs in the— in this world, and what is the incredible opportunity that they represent. So, Who am I? For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Anne Ravanona and I am the founder and CEO of Global InvestHer. You'll be hearing my accent. It is an Irish accent because loads of people say, are you Irish? Are you American? I'm actually half Irish, half Spanish, living in France and married to a wonderful Frenchman for the last 25 years. So this is my home. I'm based in Paris and I travel all around the world to work with with you, with women entrepreneurs. And what's most important to me is that I am absolutely passionate about helping more women entrepreneurs get funded. It's my life mission, and that's why I want to have this podcast with you. I want to make sure that we can get the, you know, spread the word and get the, get the key tips out there to the people who need them, and to help raise awareness about, you know, the differences that female founders face and underrepresented founders as well. But we'll be focusing on female founders. When it comes to raising money to grow their business. So, you know, in my past life I've worked as a consultant, I've done post-merger integration, you know, with big groups, I've been a consultant on leadership and management development for the big Fortune 500 companies, training and pitching for those multi-million dollar deals, so I've been pitching for many, many, many years, I've been in that hot seat, I've worked in advertising, employer branding, all that kind of stuff, But what's most important is that I want to help bring the different talents that I have to the front to be able to serve you, the listeners and the wonderful audience of this podcast. So what's going to be the format of this podcast? We're going to have weekly episodes. They'll be short and sharp, you know, some will be up to 30 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer, but it's really going to be full of different themes. You'll get specific podcast episodes just with my analysis of how I see things, what's happening in the, in the funding world for female founders. I'll be bringing in expert guests to help understand or break down that knowledge. So whether they'll be female founders who have successfully raised funds— they've got the t-shirts, so I think you want to hear from them and, you know, really get to the real story behind their fundraising. What's and all, so that, that can help you, you know, can help our listeners to really understand what it's like and get the key tips of what has worked. I'll also be inviting fantastic investors who currently invest in female founders who understand it, and, you know, so it'll help you to kind of learn a little bit more about what it is they look for before investing, you know, the key tips that they want to share and why it is that they invest in female founders. And also, I'll be talking to ecosystem partners, so all the other people in this ecosystem who then make it happen. The accelerators, the big corporates who support female founders, the nonprofits, whoever it is when it comes to expertise and funding female founders and helping changing that world and, you know, making this gap smaller. I'll be talking to them, and I want to bring you the best quality people to this show. They will be international guests, so get ready for that, and you'll hear a lot of different accents and insights with a very open mindset and a global worldview, and that's super, super important to me. And lastly, about this format for the podcast, every last Thursday of the month we're going to have a special series called the Market Roundup, where Inma Martínez, who's a venture partner at Deep Sciences Ventures, and myself, we're going to discuss the global money markets and their effect on innovation funding and startup capital requirements. So, you know, we're going to help you understand the culture of money, the ripple effects of market activity in society, how different sectors and markets are being transformed and disrupted, and above all, teach you how to read between the lines of what the media reports on these financial markets so that if you're a startup or an investor in that market, we can give you some insights and kind of fresh thinking so that you can capture the key learnings. And the whole point of that is to help you hone your skills so So particularly for female founders, so that, you know, you can learn how to capitalize your company, get the funding you need, position it for IPOs. You know, we hope that'll happen, or also to become an attractive acquisition target. You know, money makes the world go round, so we want to help you get on that merry-go-round with the right mindset and attitude. And Inma will be with me every month to help you do that. So look out for Market Roundup. Now, if you want to find out more about the podcast, please take a look at our website, which is very simply at invest herpodcast.com where you'll have links to all the episodes as they become available. And of course, we want you to click the subscribe button. You'll hear more about that later. So where— how did I find my why? I think what's super, super important is to say, okay, what's your why and how do you find it? Because inspiration can, can come from anywhere as long as you're open and willing to listen to it and to do the work. So what's my why? Well, why am I doing this? I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. In fact, you know, I remember being 17 and telling my Spanish uncle, by the time I'm 33, I'm gonna have my own company and I'm gonna have offices in Madrid and Paris, London, New York. And I didn't know in what, but I said, I'm definitely gonna be an entrepreneur. Now, it didn't turn out exactly in that time frame, but hey, yes, I am an entrepreneur. And what did happen was What kind of pushed me over the edge to really take that leap finally and to join the ranks was 80 years ago I lost my brother in very tragic, tragic circumstances, and it really helped me to reprioritize my life. You know, it was a real shock to the system, and I kind of said, wow, you know, you never know when is your time, and I wanted to make sure that You know, my time on the earth was doing what I really, really wanted to do and love. So that made me think a lot, that incident and that, you know, heartache. And a few months later, I also had a bad accident. I really badly injured my neck and I turned 40. So all of this together was like the world saying to me, Anne, stop. Get off the merry-go-round. You've got to stop and take stock. What is it that you really want to do and why are you here? So I took the time to think. I mean, it took me about a year to recuperate from my accident, and I took the time to think. I learned how to blog. I started to interview female founders and people, and I said, okay, I really, really want to work in the world of— bring together the world of women leadership. It has to be global. It has to be in the business realm, and I want to really solve a problem. But I didn't really know yet what I wanted to do, and so So in the— at the end of 2012, I went to the Women's Forum for Economy and Society in Deauville when it was still there in France, and I met Cherie Blair. I was very lucky to meet her when she was one of the speakers there and was invited, kindly invited, to an event she was running for her Women Entrepreneur Program that she was launching in London. And you know, sometimes this is where serendipity comes in, and you never know where inspiration comes from. So remember, I was just getting back in the saddle after, you know, a big break and I was in transition and I went to this conference. I went to her event on women entrepreneurs. She has a great mentoring program and there was the founder of JustGiving who was there, one of the co-founders, and I asked her a question from the audience and I said, what's been your biggest challenge, you know, as a woman entrepreneur? I was genuinely curious and she said, It was access to funding. And a light bulb went off in my head. It's a bit like you see in the cartoons. That's what the way it really was for me. This light bulb went off in my head and I said, really? Is there a difference? Is it harder for women to raise money? So first of all, I got curious and I started to read up on, you know, any literature I could find, any studies I could find about female founders and funding. And this is in 2012, remember, before it got to be a hot topic, thankfully, that it is today. So I started to read and I came across this study by the IFC World Bank that said that the funding gap between, you know, what women entrepreneurs and male entrepreneurs raise to fund their businesses worldwide, they estimated it to be $300 billion. Now you heard me right, $300 billion. I couldn't believe it and I was like, what? That's how big the gap is? I'd never heard that statistic before. Nobody was talking about it, and yet I just came across it because I got curious. And then what happened? I got mad, meaning I got angry. And the reason I got angry is because it really touched a nerve for me. My biggest value is equality between men and women and, you know, access to the same resources and opportunities. And when I heard about this huge gender gap in the funding world, I decided I want to do something and why? What's the real reason behind my why? You heard me say earlier I wanted to help women work in leadership and all that stuff. Well, I have 2 fantastic teenage kids— well, they're not kids, young adults— and they are absolutely fantastic. My daughter Emily, she is now 18, and my son Ethan, he is 15 going on 16. And what I learned is that If both of my children went today to look for funding for their startup, my son would be 70% more likely to get funded just because of his gender. Now, he doesn't even have to be good. Just because he's a guy, he would get, you know, he'd be 70% more likely to get the funding he needs. And that actually made my blood boil, and I said, that's it, I found what I want to do. Now, what's important to say is, like, I didn't come from a background of finance. My background is you know, international marketing, it's business, global business development, strategy, management consulting, but it wasn't pure finance. But I cared enough about the problem to want to make a difference. And here's where I put my question to you: what's your why? Why do you do what you do? Whether you're a female founder, why is it that you have decided to solve that particular problem that you're working on? If you're an investor, why did you choose to fund startups in that particular sector or stay at that particular stage in geography? Why is it your team, the best team to bring this project forward? And why now? What's your why? I'd love to know, so please do put in the comments because it's great to, it's great to, great to hear. Because once you know your why, it can really become the, you know, the motor to help you move forward. So now you know a little bit more about my why. Why am I doing this? You know, I basically, as a result of all that searching and soul-searching, in 2013 I set up Global InvestHer, and I'll tell you more about that in a little bit. But the reason I want to be here is why— that funding gap of $1.7 trillion. Let's go a little bit deeper into this. Now there's Thankfully, in the past 5 years or 6 years since I started my company, things have really started to come out a lot more. We've a lot more research that shows, hey, you know, maybe we're all missing out on something because we're not spreading out the resources and the funding to female founders and to founders of color and, you know, underrepresented founders. And for some of you, if you may not know some of these things, I want to share some of these key resources with you. In 2015, one of the great American venture capital firms called First Round Capital, they kind of did a 10-year audit of all the startups that they had funded since 2015. So they went back 2015 and they said, okay, let's see how our funds have— how our investments have performed. We want to kind of do a, you know, we're kind of closing this fund or whatever it is, we want to check how we're doing. And guess what they found? They found that when you had female founders on the team, so you had a mixed founder team, those startups outperformed the all-male teams by 63%. Wow, by 63%. So wow, people started to take note and said, wow, that's quite interesting. Here we actually have a very reputable VC firm in the US who has analyzed the stats, looked at their own performance, and, you know, the mixed teams with a female founder, at least one, it's outperforming by 63%. Maybe that should make us think a little bit more about it. And, you know, that was in 2015, so where are we now? This year's study in 20— sorry, October this year, October 2019, Crunchbase brought out their study and they looked at the last 9 months basically of the year and they wanted to see how much money was going to female-founded companies. Now, their annual report last year and the year before showed that approximately 2.2% of the total venture capital went to all-female founding teams. 2.2%! 0.2%. Yes, you heard me correctly. Now, up until October 2019 this year, that figure has represented basically the amount of money that's been invested in female-only founded companies or co-founded teams. Again, the mixed teams has been about $20 billion this year, which is pretty good. It's pretty good. It's better than— it's the highest it's ever been. But the fact is female-only founders are still only getting 3% of the time— sorry, 3% of the pie, 3% of total venture capital. And guess what? That figure hasn't really moved in the past 10 years, and that's really a huge problem. Now, you know, something I say when I do a lot of public speaking and I'm raising awareness out there in tech conferences, at my TEDx talk, I kind of say, hey, What percentage of the global population are women? What percentage? And, you know, the audience usually says to me, hey, Anne, oh, actually it's about 50%. I'm like, 51%. I said, yeah, exactly. What percentage of funding goes to those 50% or 51% of human capital? 3%. I said, do the math. Does that make sense? So what's happening is about 6%— 16%, sorry, of total venture capital, based on last year's figures, is going to mixed founder teams, and the rest, the huge bulk of the money worldwide, is going to all-male teams, and predominantly white, let's be frank. So why is that happening? Well, there's a whole variety of issues, but I think the key one really is that investors tend to invest in what they know and feel comfortable with, whether it's a sector, whether it's a stage, whether it's a geography, people who've been to the same university or college as them. And guess what? You know, today, only about 8% of total venture capitalists in the world— 8%— are women. So if you've got 90% of venture capitalists, the people holding the big pots of money, are men, and 97% of funding goes to all-male or mixed teams. There's a huge, huge gap. And when I first learned about that, I was like, okay, you can get angry about it and so on, but actually I see it as a huge, huge opportunity. And, you know, when I first set up Global InvestHer as a platform to educate and train female founders on how to get funded, how to get ready for funding, building up their confidence, you know, their networks, all of that's good stuff. check it out on globalinvesther.com. But when I set up in 2013, I actually did an experiment. I turned on a Google alert and I wanted to be alerted as to, you know, any article to do with funding female founders, fundraising women entrepreneurs, investing in women entrepreneurs. I put on a Google alert and I, you know, I was curious to see. And at that time I used to get maybe one article a week, so maybe 4 articles a month on the topic, and now that has exploded. So thankfully, you know, we're really, really starting to talk about this topic and this big funding gap, this gender funding gap, because now that same, very same alert— I haven't changed it— I get maybe 3 to 4 articles a day, you know, so that's fantastic. And what has changed since I set up in 2013 is that we are seeing more and more women-only funds who invest in female founders, more and more funds who are opening up to invest in underrepresented founders, to, you know, just invest in more women. And that's a fantastic thing because Let's come on to the next point. What is the size of this opportunity? Like, I'm like saying, for many years I was saying this has been an opportunity loss that we're not investing in female founders, you know, and I wished that I was able to say this is how much money we're losing or what's being left on the table because we're not funding female founders. And I was delighted to see in July this year, Boston Consulting Group, they came out with a study and they basically analyzed what would be the impact of men and women participating equally as entrepreneurs. And so what they estimated is that global GDP could rise by approximately 3 to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 to $5 trillion. Trillion dollars. So that's the $5 trillion opportunity is there. And for many, many years from the beginning, I've been saying that women entrepreneurs, we are the biggest untapped resource to reignite the global economy. And if you look back on articles and things and speeches I've given back from that time, every time I speak, I say this. And now we have some statistics to back it up. And why is that really cool? Because As we know, these are very uncertain times. The economy is, is really going up and down. We've been through a huge financial crisis in 2008. I don't need to tell you about the geopolitics that's going on. And so yeah, we're in unstable VUCA times, volatile, uncertain times. And so we actually— when resources are, are rarer, that's when we should be looking at what's under our nose. And what's right under our nose is this amazing untapped resource that are women entrepreneurs. Today, about 30% of all new businesses around the world are set up by women entrepreneurs. Imagine if we could push that up to at least 50% or more, you know. And those women entrepreneurs, we are raising and growing our companies on about half the capital that— or sorry, not even half, a third the capital that men raise. So, you know, we're not getting access to the same amount of opportunity and funding, and that's actually holding back the global economy. Now, this is not me going on a rampage to say invest in women, invest in women just because they're women, and they don't have to be good, it doesn't matter, we just have equality and get balance. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is when you are thinking about investing, Widen the net, take a wider look out there, see what's out there, because actually there are incredible female founders to help you, give you a better return, and there are amazing, amazing women entrepreneurs in all categories. It's not just retail. So what can we do? What do we need to change in the world of funding? This is something that we'll be tackling and bringing up on each of our podcasts moving forward. But I want to give you my take as we move forward in this series. For me, we need to rewrite the rules. I think the funding game needs to change. It was created many, many years ago by some cool guys in Silicon Valley, but the world has changed and women's economic contribution has changed. And I think we need to recognize that, and we need to be seen and have a real seat at the table. We need to make the table bigger. So let's rewrite the rules of funding. Let's open our minds and get out of our comfort zones, both investors by taking a look and asking, actively asking to see more female founders, making them feel more welcome, and female founders, women entrepreneurs, let's go for the big money. Let's ask for more money and not hold ourselves back. The other thing for me that we need to do to change this world of funding is we do need to increase the number of women entrepreneurs and the number of women investors in VCs. Now, that's going to take time, and, you know, we need to educate the next generation. There's many things we need to do, but if we don't start now, it's going to take us a long, long time. And again, when I did my TEDx in 2015 and I spoke about this topic, the World Economic Forum, their global gender gap analysis, said that at that time it was going to take us 70, nearly 80 years to get to gender parity in the economic sphere. Guess what? Fast forward 6— sorry, that was in 2015, so fast forward 4 years and now it's got— they estimate it's going to take over nearly 200 years. We've gone backwards and, you know, I just won't stand for that. So that's why I think we need to Kind of see what can we do to change this world of funding. So rewrite the rules, open our minds, and get out of our comfort zones, both investors and female founders. We need more women investors and VCs, more funds, more money going to women entrepreneurs. And for me, what's essential is we need to put the fun back into funding. We've got to break the process of doing it and make it more fun instead of really hard work, which it really, really is. And so each episode of this podcast My guests and I, we're gonna share our tips on exactly how to do that. So, as we close here, you know, my entrepreneurial journey so far, it's been a series of ups and downs. I've been on the roller coaster of entrepreneurship. And why am I so passionate? Because I'm like you. I'm a female founder. When I started all of this, I didn't know anything about funding. I didn't know anything about fundraising. I didn't know about investing. I didn't know the size of the problem. And now I've gone from knowing nothing to actually giving talks about it around the world, working with groups, working individually, you know, building a platform on this and really working with corporates, just trying to change the hearts and minds of anybody in this funding game, in this funding atmosphere that I can. And, you know, I learned it all from scratch, but the whole point for me of creating GlobalInvestHer and our platform is to say you don't have to do that, you don't have to learn from scratch. I want to speed up the learning for the female founders who are listening. I want you to know I've got your back. I'm not just in this for the short haul, I'm in this for the long haul. I want to make a difference with you and for you, and so this is my life mission. I found it in my 40s, and I hope to be here a long time to help make a change in this world of funding with you and and for you and to serve you. So, you know, I've learned on this journey what's been hard for female founders, and I've built this— I've built the platform for you. You know, I'm a woman entrepreneur building it for you women entrepreneurs, and I've been interviewing and speaking to many amazing investors around the world to understand the world of funding from their perspective. So what I want to do, if I had a superpower— and people laugh when I say this, but it's really true— if I had a superpower, I really wish I could download all this amazing knowledge that, you know, seasoned investors have about how to position an investment opportunity to them and, you know, appeal to them and, and, and find true partner and find a real incredible match to work together to create more value and to give them a return. And I would love to be able to download all the knowledge and wisdom in the head of those female founders who've successfully raised the funds and put it together in a format that's easy to use, that is high quality, and that really helps you move forward on your funding journey, whether you're the female founder— and that's principally who I serve— but also the investors, as to how can we all make a difference and change this world of funding. So over the past few years, I've built the Global Investor Platform. I've You know, I've done loads and loads of free webinars, and recently we launched the Investor Academy with online courses so you can learn this stuff in— on your time when it suits you, because I know how busy you are. But you can get really practical insights on, you know, crowdfunding, on how to pitch to male investors, all this cool stuff, and masterclasses with female founders, masterclasses with investors, and many more cool stuff to come. So This podcast is going to be our weekly date. I can't wait to see you again and to, to, to be with you again, and thanks a million for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this episode, our very first episode, and I hope we're going to have many, many more adventures together. So if you've liked what you've heard, be sure to subscribe in the links before— below, sorry. I will be putting the links to the research and all the resources that I've mentioned, they're going to be in the links of the show notes. So check them out, go to investorpodcast.com, and you'll hear more, um, now messages from me. So see you now next week where we're going to have a super, super episode. So stay tuned and bye for now. And remember, let's change this world of funding and let's put the fun into funding. Bye for now. Thank you for listening to InvestHer Podcast. Don't miss more great funding tips and insights by subscribing to the podcast on Apple or your favorite podcast host. And while you're there, I'd love you to rate and review the show. We'd love to hear from you. So if you'd like to send in some questions, interact with our guests, or suggest other great people we should feature, join our community on the Flick InvestHer group. Or send us a message on investherpodcast.com. Want more great resources for female founders about funding? Check out our InvestHer Academy at academy.globalinvesther.com. I'm Anne Ravanona and look forward to having you with us again for our next episode. Let's put the fun into funding and get more women entrepreneurs funded.