Episode #236 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Lori Cashman, Managing General Partner at Victress Capital.
A disproportionate amount of capital invested into companies does not go to gender diverse teams and it’s a problem. It’s a problem and an issue that I’ve brought up multiple times in this podcast as I hope the continuous awareness of this issue creates a positive impact over time.
Based on Lori’s background and the focus on her firm, it was a perfect opportunity to find out if we are making some level of progress in terms of capital fundraising for gender diverse companies. We kick off our interview on this topic and we address a recent report from Pitchbook that shares some positive statistics from this year in terms of company exits, funding activity, and unicorn valuations for women-led startups… but as you’ll hear… there’s still a long way to go.
Victress Capital is working to address this issue with a focused on investing in early-stage consumer startups with gender diverse teams. The firm recently announced its second fund and portfolio company examples include companies like Daily Harvest (which was recently valued at over $1B), Droplette, Summersalt, Alyce, and many others.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- Lori’s background story and how she transitioned into an investor role, then co-founded a private equity firm called Lineage Capital.
- What led Lori and her partner, Suzanne Norris, down the path of starting Victress Capital.
- All the details on the firm in terms of the size of their fund, stage of investing, and how they evaluate startups.
- Advice on building a consumer company and why you should focus on retention versus paid acquisition.
- And so much more.
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.