In this webinar, Anne Ravanona, founder and CEO of Global InvestHer, outlines the organization’s mission to fund one million women entrepreneurs by 2030 and explains the persistent gender funding gap, citing World Bank/IFC data that the global credit gap grew from $300 billion in 2013 to $1.7 trillion post‑COVID and that only 1.9 % of venture capital goes to women‑only founded teams. She argues that closing this gap will reignite the global economy and combat bias. To address the problem, Global InvestHer launches the Funder Directory – a curated, independently ranked global database of 615 funders across 119 countries and 164 sectors. The directory ranks funders on five criteria: (1) actual investment in women‑founder companies, (2) presence of women decision‑makers, (3) public support for women entrepreneurs, (4) focus exclusively on women‑led ventures, and (5) gender‑lens investing. Rankings are performed by Global InvestHer, not self‑reported by funders. The tool is designed to help women founders efficiently identify suitable investors and enable funders to benchmark their women‑founder friendliness. Anne also highlights her broader advocacy work, including policy engagement with governments and international bodies, to drive systemic change.
Chapters
Welcome everybody from wherever you are coming in around the world. We have incredible participants with us from all around the world. I am your host here to welcome you today. I'm Anne Ravanona, the founder and CEO of Global InvestHer, and I'm delighted that you've taken the time to come here. I bet you're curious. Are you curious from the messages you've seen on that social media? Well, I am glad you are coming. So welcome everybody. Thank you all for coming, and I am so, so glad to have you with me. So let's get started. I want to share, bring you through the journey, the why, what it is we're going to unveil today to you, who we are, and show you, give you a look inside so you can see what we're talking about, because we are so excited and so proud to bring this new tool to you that I think is going to really make a difference to both women entrepreneurs who are looking for funding, who want to find the right type of investor for their business. And also for you, the investor, how do you compare with other funds and sources of funding on how well are you doing with— when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs? Are you interested? I'm sure we tickled your fancy, as we say. I'm sure we got you curious. And I'm glad you're curious because the fact that you're curious to know what it is we're going to share with you today means that, you know, there's room for change. Things need to change when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs. So that's what we're going to do. A little bit about us to start with, if you don't know who we are. So here at Global InvestHer, we are on a mission to help get 1 million women entrepreneurs funded by 2030, by— for— in time for the SDG goals. Why do I have this mission? Well, my story is 10 years ago, I was just like many of you other women entrepreneurs, I was actually in an audience going to a pitch event, seeing a woman entrepreneur pitch. And from the audience, I put my hand up and I asked her, I said, what was your biggest challenge when you were as an entrepreneur? And she said to me, it was access to funding, it was finding that money. And the light bulb went off in my head. And I said, hmm, is it harder for women to raise money? And basically, I started to get curious. First of all, I got curious, and I started to read down the rabbit hole of research on, you know, what was the story when it came to funding. And I discovered in 2013 that at the time, the World Bank had estimated that the global credit gap of funding between male and female entrepreneurs at the time was estimated to be $300 billion. That was enough to make my blood boil. I said, okay, I found what I want to work on. And so I decided I want to change things. And guess what? Things have not gotten better, as we're going to discover moving forward. So we're on this mission to help getting a million women entrepreneurs funding— funded. Why? Because we want to help reignite the global economy. And I truly, profoundly believe from the bottom of my soul that women, diverse women, are the greatest underrepresented, overlooked resource that can reignite our global economy. And so why is it important to invest in women entrepreneurs? Because those women entrepreneurs, if you see in the cycle here, they're looking for funding, they can build a successful business. More of them, more of us, we can become business angels or venture capitalists. We can get— we can change the perceptions about, you know, women entrepreneurs and funding. And there's a lot of unconscious bias out there that women are risk-averse or risky investments, all of that stuff, it's simply not true. But we can change the game by being more visible, by being more seen. And also, we want to create this virtuous cycle where more men also want to invest in women entrepreneurs. Are you with me? So you know what our mission is, you know what our vision is, we believe in women entrepreneurs. And that's why I am a woman entrepreneur myself, I'm in the trenches with you every single day. And not only that, I'm working really, really hard with our team together at Global InvestHer, all our team from around the world. We want to help you in as many ways that we can, both the founders and the funders. And today we're going to talk about in particular a tool that serves both. Hey, good thing, huh? So what we do is we bring funding education to women entrepreneurs. So we want to help upscale, upskill women entrepreneurs so they get investor ready. We want to change hearts and minds through our global advocacy of both investors to invest more in women, more women to become more investors, and more women entrepreneurs to go for funding. So we do a lot of work on changing mindsets through education, through tools, and through our global community. And we have— I'm blessed to see some of our community members with us live as we speak. And we also give a lot of visibility to women founders. And if you check out our social media every single week and every single day. We are showcasing incredible women founders from around the world. So check it out. So we want to change things. We're catalysts for change. And that is why we have created this new tool. I am a global advocate when it comes to funding. Here I am. I've had the incredible luck and honor to have met President Macron of France. I am part of the EU delegation to the W20, which is the global engagement group to the G20, working on public policy So I'm not only in the trenches in my own business, creating my business, building tools and solutions for both founders and funders to help close the funding gap. I'm also out there beating the drum from a policy perspective, talking to governments, talking with other policy shapers and makers to see how can we change the rules, the ecosystem to bring about systemic change. And that's very important. What we do, everything we do at GIH, Global InvestorHer, is to fulfill the mission and to help get those women entrepreneurs who are working on the SDGs funded. And we're also working on them ourselves. So why do we care? I think you can hear the passion in my voice. It comes from my voice, it comes from my soul. And when I saw that figure of $300 billion gap in funding in 2013, I got revolted because my biggest personal value is equality between men and women, equal opportunity between men and women. I have both a daughter and a son, adult daughter and son, who are both fantastic young people, young adults in the world, and I want them to have a better opportunity for them and for our future grandchildren and future generations to come. Because, as we know, the world of funding is broken. And why do I care? Because this latest statistic, if you didn't see it, it should make your blood boil too. Only 1.9% of global venture capital funding went to women-only founded teams. 1.9%. It has been getting worse year on year on year on year for the past 15, 20 years. It hasn't really budged. I think the highest it went up to was 2.7%, I don't know, a few years ago. But we keep sliding down. COVID has impacted us. So things are getting worse. And that figure of $300 billion that I shared with you today, it's so much worse because pre-COVID— so in 2019, before the latest figures we had pre-COVID, The World Bank, IFC, they redid that study and they found, they estimated that credit gap had gone from $300 billion to $1.7 trillion. I'm not here to be hysterical. If you didn't know, you need to know this because we have to make a change. We have to make a change. So That's why anything that we do at Global Investor has to work towards this figure, right? So we need to make a change. Oh, are you ready for briefing? If you've seen my TED Talk, you'll know that I share, um, pilot talk because my husband happens to be a captain, uh, in Air France. And when the 2 pilots are in the cockpit, to get the attention of the other pilot when they have to give them some very, very important information They need to make sure they have their full attention. And I want to make sure I've got your full attention. So in the cockpit, one pilot says to the other, are you ready for briefing? And the— he waits, he or she waits to hear from their co-pilot before giving them important information. And that's for flight safety. So I think this is flight safety too. This is our safety. This is us creating a better world. So are you ready for briefing? We have created the first global directory of sources of funding from around the world, and we have ranked them by how women founder-friendly they are. And you're like, wow, what is that? So first of all, let's break— take this piece by piece. Sources of funding. It's— that's why we call it the Funder Directory. The Funder Directory, because we want to talk about all the different sources of funder. Who's a funder? A funder is any entity or person that gives funding to women entrepreneurs, and they're very different sources of funding. So that can be a grant organization, an accelerator, an angel, angel network, venture capital, private equity. Corporate venture capital, etc. Okay, so we wanted to make available to the world a global database of sources of funding from around the world. And the thing that's very different about it is that we rank them independently. It's us who does the ranking. We rank them by how women founder friendly they are. How does that sound? I mean, What do you think? Let me know. Brilliant, says Jen. So what is it? So in this global database, as we go live, so it is going to— I'm going to show you what is in here. We currently cover 119 countries, 615 different funders who are in this database as we speak, as we go live, and that is going to be added to every single week. So we didn't want to just start with a small number. We said, okay, let's bring you as many as we can. And from 164 sectors. Now I know here on this webinar live with me, we have a lot of investors from different sectors. And this tool is going to be so helpful to both founders and funders. And I'm going to show you this and walk you through. So what it's going to help you to do is it's going to help— let's talk about founders. It is the new best funding friend. It is going to help both founders and funders save time. How? Because we are doing the curation and the collation of the information, we're finding the information, but giving you the meaty information you need in order to, if you're a founder, to decide who is the best source of funding for you. And if you're a funder, compare yourself against the other sources of funding. Just see how you're doing. You know, versus your competitors, whether they're direct or indirect, because that's a useful thing. So this new funding friend, I want to share first of all to tell you a little bit more what it does. So we share different sources of funding. I've explained that. We also share how female founder friendly or women founder friendly it is from all over the world, and you can filter and it's updated. So let's tell you a little bit more what is this— let's zoom in here to the filter. What are the criteria that we use to measure each of these sources of funding? Well, first of all, we check, have they actually invested in a woman entrepreneur? Now, that is, it can be— it's a woman-founded or co-founded company. So it can be— the woman can be the founder or the co-founder. Have they already invested in a company that has a woman entrepreneur? So what have they at the top of the, of the organization who is a founder, who has co-founded, have they done it? Yes or no? So we want to see the ones who are walking the talk. Okay. We also check to see, do they have women investors who are writing the checks? We check to see. So we'll go, we'll check online, we'll see what is the role of that woman investor, if it's in a fund, if it's an accelerator program, etc. Do they actually have the power to make that check-writing decision? So if they do, they get another tick. The 3rd criterion that we check against is, do they publicly support women entrepreneurs? Now, this can take different shapes and forms. So basically what we're looking for is we will check on their website. Do they actually feature women entrepreneurs anywhere? Like, do they showcase them in their photos? Do they mention them in case studies from the portfolios? Do they— have they signed a charter on diversity in venture capital or in funding? Do they have an ESG policy where they mention gender diversity? We go and check. So we want to see, are they doing these things? Then if they are, we also check to see, is this source of funding only focused entirely on women entrepreneurs? So they get a tick if they are, because thankfully we're getting more and more of these sources of funding that are entirely focused on women entrepreneurs. And then if they have satisfied all of those other 4, they get an extra tick because we say, yes, do they invest with a gender lens? Meaning, are they counting? Are they counting the percentage of women in their portfolio? So sometimes it's easy for us to check and see, are they doing that? Because we can see they will mention the statistics, of women founders in their portfolios. Very few do, by the way. Some of them who have signed charters with Diversity VC and other international charters around diversity in funding and venture capital, they will say it, but most sources of funding don't. And we really hope that this funder directory is gonna help change things by making things more transparent. And so who does the ranking, you may ask? We do the ranking. So this is Build Invest Her, who rank it, we check. So we have 2 ways of funders getting onto the directory, 2 different ways. One is curation, where we go and find them. So we are scouring the press, we are scouring our networks, we are finding out who— what are those sources of funding that are actually walking the walk, talking the talk, and walking the walk when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs. And the other way that we have inputs into the funder directory are for funders to sign up themselves. So if you are a source of funding, if you're an investor, a fund, or business angel, any type of source of funding, stay tuned because in the Q&A box I'm gonna give you link to the links for you to sign up if you haven't already signed up. So we already have over 40 out of those 160 650 have signed up. And you will ask, I'm preempting your question to me is, do the people who sign up, do those funders self-rank how women founder friendly they are? The answer is no, we do the ranking. And so even when a funder fills in the form and tells us about themselves, we will go back and we'll add to the information, 'cause you're gonna see that this is not a simple list. No. This goes beyond a list, a simple list, because we wanna make this information actionable and strategic and to help you save time, whether you're a founder or a funder. Okay, does that make sense? So basically, now I've given you the, the overview of what the Funder Directory is. Let's go inside. Are you ready for a preview?
