Event Recap: Women in VC Panel
By Jiayi Ruan and Allison Lin
CVP is thrilled to have hosted a panel featuring five remarkable female investors who shared their experiences in the venture capital industry. The guests included Bryanna Samuels, an angel investor, Layla Alexander from Female Founders, Laura Hamilton representing GGV Capital, Naomi Goez from Forum Ventures, and Elizabeth Brown from Vanterra Capital. This article contains highlights from the panel including industry insights, our panelists’ investment theses, and their career advice navigating a traditionally male-dominated field.
Female Founders
Layla shed light on the stark reality that women-led businesses receive only 2% of all venture capital funding. She is proactively addressing this imbalance (i.e. opportunity) at Female Founders Fund, the leading source of institutional capital for female founders raising seed rounds. There are also some promising stats:
- Companies with female founders on the founding team perform 63% better than those with only male founders
- Female-founded companies have been able to maintain a lower burn rate compared to the overall market, utilizing 25% less capital per month
- Female founders are exiting faster than the broader market with a median time to exit of 7.2 years, 12.5% faster than the 8.1 years for all startups.
More investors are catching on to these trends and investing in female talent — as Layla observes: “these strengths are seen anecdotally in our portfolio, such as the unicorn Maven Clinic.”
Macro Trends
In 2021, venture capital was a very attractive asset class given the lower interest rate. The byproduct is that investors injected a significant amount of capital into startups and emerging companies during that time at historical valuations. A lot of analysts joined during this peak time as well, including 2 of the 5 panelists.
In the past year and a half, however, there has been a slowdown in the VC market. Investors are taking a more cautious approach. As a result, VC is now a harder industry for undergrads to break into. That said, there are relatively more opportunities in the early-stage — as there is currently a higher proportion of investments happening in early-stage startups. Some of the useful skills for today’s analysts include sourcing and solid decision-making skills, which will be covered in the next section.
Investment Decision Factors
“There is an emphasis on understanding the market environment. After in-depth research, our fund conducts targeted outreach as part of outbound sourcing.” Elizabeth spoke about her thesis-driven work in the longevity space, a focus at Venterra Capital, “As we are speaking with startups in the early phases, I also index on whether a founder is open to feedback.”
“Three areas for evaluation are founder, market, and product.” Naomi adds, “I look for founders who have a deep, nuanced understanding of the problem. Then I derisk the investment by examining what are ways of getting a sustainable advantage in the market, such as distribution, value chain, and technology.”
Finally, Bryanna pitched in her perspective on dealing with later-stage companies: “In addition, to KPI, financials, and more importantly, unit economics. One common trait is that the founder is extremely communicative at all stages — they are good at telling a story. Being a great salesperson can attract talent, and sell the vision when the business is pivoting.”
Career Advice for Undergraduates
Traditional careers such as IB and consulting are still relevant: Apart from learning financial modeling and building business intuition, these traditional paths admittedly do still strengthen resumes and open doors for future opportunities.
Be plugged into the startup ecosystem: Actively participate in the startup ecosystem by attending events, joining relevant communities, and leveraging online platforms. This involvement demonstrates your passion, knowledge, and connections within the startup world.
Show your value proposition: New hires are expected to do a job of a VC before they are in a VC. Convince fund managers that you can bring value to their firm by highlighting your ability to tap into networks, identify investment opportunities, and contribute to due diligence processes. For instance, students can aid in understanding Gen Z investment trends. Ultimately, what matters the most is demonstrating an understanding of the startup ecosystem and potential to add value to a fund’s investment strategy.
We wish to extend our gratitude to the panelists for their insights and contributions!
