Gender-lens Investing: Empowering Female Entrepreneurs

Funding to female founders is staggeringly low, with research showing that female-led businesses received only 2.2% of global venture capital funding in 2018. Galvanized by that data, the all-female Capstone team developed a venture capital fund to address the chasm between investment capital and the female founders who are often underrepresented in venture capital. The fund will invest seed-stage capital to female founders located in under-invested regions. The mission is to activate the untapped potential of these underserved markets to strengthen their positive community impact and empower the founders. This will be achieved not only by providing access to capital, but also by coaching, mentoring, and creating connections to help women scale their enterprises beyond early-stage venture financing. By leveraging data from gender-lens investing funds, this project will lay the foundation for a new avenue of funding devoted to diverse entrepreneurial success.