Women, Wealth, & Innovation: Female Founders and Funders Driving the Future

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

A quarter of our GPs are actually either have one or more women right at the top. And I think that was not intentional. I will have to say we did not invest through a gender lens. I think by simply being earlier and backing emerging managers, we weren't unintentionally sourcing out of a pool that we weren't into like, you know, targeting.

Fatou Diagne: 

We've noticed that there is a wave of women creating incredibly interesting businesses, but they’re still at the seed, pre-seed levels, one comment that was made earlier is that actually they are bit more risk adverse in women, surprisingly, in the conversations we have with female founders are less dynamic than we have with men. 

SCS (Intro): 

The idea that meritocracy and diversity are in conflict is fundamentally flawed. We all know that. But of course, in today's polarized world, thoughtfulness doesn't trend. Extremes go viral. Balance gets buried. That doesn't mean we stop pushing for a system where merit wins free from bias, open to all.

And so in celebration of Women's History Month, I'm so proud to present a powerful conversation from the Billion Dollar Brew, London, hosted a couple months ago by my film, Beyond The Billion and Dell Technologies, where we tackled exactly how women continue to drive returns in business, investment and innovation.

We explored financing pathways from venture capital to debt, non-diluted capital, and the evolving LP landscape. Building a firm franchise; how emerging fund managers can navigate today's challenging capital environment; the rising influence of family offices where female founders are leading in ai, FinTech, and deep tech; and why investing in them is just good business. 

This special feature is brought to you by Dell Technologies and the Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network supporting female founders and funders driving the future.

SCS:

Let me welcome my panelists, Fatou Diagne from Bootstrap Europe; Ella Jade Co-Founder and CEO of ROOBBA; Mohadeseh Abdullahi for Molten Ventures; and Wiem Gharbi who's building what's next in ai, Ankar AI. 

So today's topic, Women, Wealth, Influence, and Innovation Shaping Our Future. Ladies, let's start with setting the stage in showcasing the work that you do.

Tell us a little bit who you are and why you think I invited you for this powerful panel. Ella. 

Ella Jade: 

Hello. It's a pleasure to be here. So I am the co-founder of ROOBBA. ROOBBA is the e-commerce tech-focused furniture brand, harnessing CGI and production innovation whilst combining our in-house development of generative AI 3D technology, revolutionizing the way that you shop.

So the number one pillar that we always go back to is our production, and we spent years investing time, energy, money into our production led factories and manufacturing technologies that we have in our factories in Europe. We did that because we wanted to compete with the prices of China. And we are able to do that.

So essentially what we do is we have a large production facility that actually now we've expanded, only does ROOBBA. And we are able to keep the quality as high as you would expect from Italy, but lowering the cost, using our production techniques so that we are competing with the prices of China. Not only that, but we are able to essentially offer a very, very unique production and product offering, so we don't have any minimum quantities.

We can essentially launch a collection, and that means we can launch in every color, in every size, so that as a consumer you have much more choice. 

The second pillar that we always go back to is we are very, very focused on 3D, and that means that we can rapidly market launch our collections within two weeks. So we don't basically stock any products, but our lead times are very, very competitive 'cause of the data that our team are very focused on. And that means that we can save cost and ensure that we focus heavily on our marketing. Which brings me onto my third pillar, marketing. 

The home and furniture industry is typically very, very outdated. It's very traditional, old fashioned, not sexy. So we're here to basically shake that up and we're very focused on the way that we market. And we have our in-house animation, basically a whole Pixar department in-house that focuses on animation, so we can control the content that we put out, which is typically very hard in furniture because as you can see, they're big, heavy objects and not easy to move around. 

And the last thing that we focus on as our fourth pillar is our generative AI technology that we are developing in-house as our IP. That allows essentially you to shop incredibly easy and quickly for your home, which is typically very long-winded. And that will prove very important as we move towards the next expansion phase into completely taking over the kitchen and bathroom industry. That is again, very, very outdated. And so that will be very, very important as we move on. 

SCS: 

So I'll add why I invited Ella to this table. So we've known each other for a long time. So my entrepreneurial, I guess, nerdiness, or buds started long ago. So I see some Kings College London Alumns here. Thank you for coming. Years later we started the business club. I'm glad to see you continuing to build and of course you are a next generation. Your family legacy lives within you. You've been in the Herald sort of institution as a brand and interiors for the longest time, and now the spirit of father.

Which is ROOBBA. It's really the work that you're doing and I think represents the innovation and the influence that the next generation can have in their building, which is represented in Ella here today. But of course, the road is never easy for funding and the funder plays a very important role in this.

Fatou, you are that GP in Bootstrap. Tell us a little bit about your founding story and why Bootstrap in Europe. 

Fatou Diagne: 

Thank you. That was a great pitch, by the way. 

Ella Jade: 

Thank you. 

SCS: 

Might got checks later. This is the very reason. 

Ella Jade: 

We'll talk later. 

Fatou Diagne: 

I'm Fatou. I'm the managing partner of the funds called Bootstrap Europe. We invest in technology, like VC funds except we do it with loans to support startup and technology. Deep science, life science, energy condition, climate tech. So we started the fund with my partner Stephanie here over 10 years ago. 

We have a fantastic team based in London and Zurich, and together as a team we have been involved in about a billion, I like the billion number, transactions, helping founders and their investors dilution with non-diluted money venture debt. 

That serves two roles. One for the founder ecosystem, basically this is to complement the equity funding. 'cause this is not the only tool available, especially when you're thinking of CapEx heavy businesses, long R&D work cycles. You want a lot of funding and you want non-dilutive funding. 

And then the second point is filling the gaps for partners. Because one of the most exciting areas, not only for us but for our investors, is innovation. This is where most of the value with the growth has been created in Europe today. And it's very hard to gain access to this through VC funds. VC funds are doing an amazing job in Europe.

The ecosystem has grown since we started investing, but LPs like to mix it up a little bit and give them access to the same asset that with different type of returns. And if, you know, as allocators, they like to diversify. So it's really enriching the ecosystem in Europe. 

We love meeting new founders and I have to say, every time I come to event. I'm amazed by the numbers of women hiding whether entrepreneurs or VCs or LPs, and I think we need, yeah, more events that foster these relationships. 

SCS: 

Thank you. Fatou. And I'll come back to your interesting strategy and how you started that. But of course, as we talk about LPs, limited Partners, Mo, you are with Molten Ventures, which is publicly listed, so a very different approach to how most limited partners take it.

Tell us a little bit about. Molten and your personal journey to this. 

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

Yeah, sure. Happy to. Great to meet you everyone. So Molten is a publicly listed fund. We were founded back in 2006. We're very much a European focused generalist in sort of nature. We do enterprise SaaS, consumer deep tech hardware from Revolut to Trustpilot, UiPath, sort of some of our key holdings.

What's interesting on the LP side is about sort of seven years ago, we decided to put our LP hats on because we noticed a significant underfunding at seed and pre-seed. In Europe, particularly compared to the US, we didn't understand why there were amazing GPS in the ecosystem. Like we’re just talking about Seed Camp earlier, and we were wondering why that gap existed.

So we decided to play a role opportunistically at the beginning, allocating a few million here and there to some of the key GPs, and then we committed €150 million of the balance sheet money to the program. The goal being that we will invest in the managers that come right before us, so we start at series A and B.

Why don't we help the ecosystem grow right before us and partner up with these companies at, you know, the point where they reach sort of our criteria of investment. To date, we've invested in 81 funds. Which is about 2,500 plus underlying portfolio companies that we have incredible data into. And we're, we're trying to track that and see if there are like signals we can pick up from it.

And in dollar value we are, we've actually now invested more in companies out of the fund of funds than in the fund of fund itself. So it's kind of like a success KPI for us. And yeah, it maybe on the female side a little bit, a quarter of our GPs are actually, either have one or more women right at the top. 

And I think that was not intentional. I will have to say we did not invest through a gender lens. I think by simply being earlier and backing emerging managers, we were unintentionally sourcing out of a pool that we weren't intent like, you know, targeting. So I think there is a point to coming early, and this is where a lot of these women are, right?

They don't make partners and they're big billion dollar funds, they leave because they're not getting the promotions that they're looking for and not getting maybe the worth of the energy they've put into their careers. So they leave, they spin out, build smaller funds, and I think that's where they're hiding sometimes, right? So it's a point of coming in a little bit earlier, and that's what we're getting to do. 

SCS: 

Yeah. And what brought you to this journey of being at Molten? I know you had a very interesting thesis years ago. 

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

Yeah. This is a very random thing, but I wrote my master's thesis back in 2016 on impact investing when it wasn't cool. And I collaborated with an asset manager called Cadium, and we built their first ever impact funder funds. So that was my first job. 

So I did my career a bit, a bit backwards. I built a fund before knowing how to invest. So a lot of tax learning, how tax law works and how to structure a fund. And I had no idea how to, like.

Do a deal, but it was amazing. And I was with them for about five years, a very concentrated impact focused strategy. And then I fell in love with venture and maybe outta love with PE. So that's why I moved. 

SCS: 

Yeah.  And I guess, you know, the reason I highlight that is of course, uh, often we're told that women and people of color don't have the track record, right? And therefore they raise smaller funds actually. So for the benefit of those of you not in investment, I know we have some founders in the room. Limited Partners are those that invest into the venture funds. They might be ultra high net worth individuals, family offices, pension funds, fund of funds, which are also in effect, money managers, right? 

They also have their funding from the outside and ultimately a lot of times the Limited Partner, so someone who looks like Mo will say, what's your track record of investing? Have you been investing for the past 10 years? Fatou is laughing because she was asked this and Stephanie a billion times, I'm sure.

Although she's done the work, she still asks us. Right? Even till today, our women still asks us. And the reason I highlighted that is because women and people of color often have a more circuitous journey because not everyone comes from a position of privilege. And that is sort of the readjustment of pattern of success that we'd like to really highlight, right?

It's not about complaining, you know, I think the intention of a panel like this is to showcase. Look where the women are doing the work. It's not about lowering the standards, but it's readjusting what your filters are that are actually holding others back in ways that maybe you didn't intend. 

So with that, Wiem, the trends you are building on, of course, is a reason why we wanted to have you here today. You spun out of Palantir spending a couple of years there in product and in strategy. Tell us about what you're building at Ankar.

Wiem Gharbi: 

Hi everyone. I'm Wiem. Thank you so much, Sarah for having me. And so I'm an engineer by training. I studied math, artificial intelligence, back in the day where it used to be called machine learning. Now it has been rebranded. 

As Sarah mentioned, I spent about six years working at Palantir where I was product deploy engineer. I saw firsthand what it means to build product, to solve real world hard problems. And that kind of gave me the inspiration that it's on me to also, kind of continue and take the learnings that I've had static be part of them in the room and like influence, like decisions on how software is built, how it's being scaled, and that's how I kind of got exposed to the problem that we're solving with, with Ankar. 

So Ankar is a platform for inventors. We build artificial intelligence tools that are tailor made to help IP professionals and R&D teams be more thorough, be more productive in creating and protecting their intellectual property.

And the mission that we have is that we want to build better tools. To help harness kind of the power of invention in helping make the world more original, ultimately. The way that we got exposed to this problem is that I was on the inventor side at Palantir, me and my co-founder, and we got exposed to the inefficiencies of actually creating intellectual properties that create more value for our company, for our products, and make our work more visible.

But we saw that these tools were, the tools that we were using at the time were very inefficient, time consuming. And thought that there was a better way. So we decided to embark on our own journey and build our own tool. 

And we're working with innovative companies, large enterprises, across different verticals of automotive, pharmaceuticals, biotech, to help them like actually better create intellectual property, better protect intellectual property, and monetize also, their intellectual property.

And this came from three challenges that we observed. The first one is that, data. So there are about 150 million patents that are publicly available. On top of that, you add trademarks, designs, a trove of technical data that is publicly available online. No human will be able to analyze all of that. 

The second piece that feeds into the same challenge is that competition is fierce. So a lot of companies are becoming more and more competitive from trying to like, build more, develop more, and as a result, also protect more their IP. And then the third kind of challenge is that the age of AI is here. And more and more inventions are actually being driven by AI and automatically created by AI.

And this means that large organizations need to actually harness the power of these tools, but also make sure that they are protecting their promise. And this is what we do. We build at the intersection of both. 

SCS: 

Love it. Very interesting. So Fatou, I wanna come back to you. You were talking about, you know, when you were forming your fund, part of the inspiration for that was you realized that there needs to be a more creative way of thinking about capital.

And yes, you know, with The Billion Dollar Fund For Women, with Beyond The Billion, we focus on venture capital, but we understand that that is not the only solution nor measure success, although founders are often bamboozled with TechCrunch. And, and the announcements of funding rounds and all of that. But we've seen in the recent years how valuations have crashed.

Empty valuations don't always work. Tell us a little bit about your thinking around the capital space and where venture debt comes into play here. 

Fatou Diagne: 

We love when companies raise a lot of money, and as you say, competition is fierce. So raise as much as you can, but what we're saying on the way to being very successful in building your company, you're going to have a lot of money raising to make a big pie. 

And at the end what happens is that you might be completed diluted to owning 1, 2 to 5% of your company after 15 years of building it. You can be the founder. You can be the VC. So what the debt helps do is, let's say you need a hundred, we say commonly you need a hundred million and 20 years to build a biotech company or deep tech company for that matter.

If 50% of that money comes from that, let's say you would have reduced your dilution by half. It's really simple math and the most sophisticated of founders, it's often repeat founders that use that tool because they understand the pain of having only a few percentage points of your company at the end. 

But, if the sophisticated founders and their investors understand the math, then we are being helpful to them in limiting dilution. Either when you want to accelerate your growth, because you figure out your unit economics and you just wanna boost your growth pension.You wanna bridge to an exit, you wanna make a strategic acquisition, you wanna build an extra factory, hire additional engineers because there is a market opportunity that is now and you don't wanna dilute until you reach a certain infection point.

That's when we are useful. You have to use it sparingly. It's very selective. I would say in Europe, probably less than 1% of companies can really qualify for the tool because first you need to have raised, convinced equity investors and based on that, be able to have a stable enough business to afford the repayment of the debt.

'cause it's still debt, but it is an incredible market of success. If you were to do an analysis of the successful companies that have raised money, exited, or built their sustainable businesses. I would be willing to bet that 80% of them have had venture debt in the past. Because when you start understanding that your equity is undervalued, you don't wanna get diagnosed at that point in time.

You wanna pass a certain milestone and then raise up 2, 3, 4 times evaluation. 

SCS: 

Yeah. So of course venture debt, you need to qualify to be able to even get that. Just out of interest, because of course the topic of today is where are the women? How are the women showing up in applying for venture debt? What are your thoughts here? Are you seeing more coming through the doors? 

Fatou Diagne: 

We've noticed that there is a wave of women creating incredibly interesting businesses, but they're still at the seed, pre-seed levels and we've been tracking some of them. We can see that they are progressing and coming through the funnel.

One comment that was made earlier is that actually they are a little bit more risk averse for women. So taking debt seems very risky to them, and they will be less inclined, maybe to take that. So we've seen, surprisingly, in the conversations we've had with female founders are less dynamic than we've had with men.

Women would be more cautious. So it has benefits, but at the same time, we would encourage women and go for it. If you can keep more your company, do it, like don't dilute. We see definitely a more with in the fields that we like. We've been always super interested in like machine learning at the time. The first venture loan we ever did was in an artificial intelligence company in Sweden. That was 2011. Wow. 

In the hard sciences, we see a high percentage of women. So in life science we see a lot of women seniors. Because the science doesn't lie, you don't need to push about it. So maybe women are more comfortable building companies around real tech than around any just business model.

We never went out looking for female founders. We didn't never considered ourselves female investors. So we have a very diverse team and we have a very diverse portfolio, but it's true that because of this diversity in the team, we had maybe 30.4% of a good founder team having a woman element, which is way higher.

SCS: 

Yeah. And I see Tingting Ping in the audience here with Moove, who raised €250 million in debt and €250 million in equity. She's in the lovely green, Jess in the back right there. So for those who don't know, move actually provides the fleet to Uber is invested in by Uber and many others, and she's the Chief Transformation Officer.

So she's not hiding. She's in a bright green dress. Go and talk to her about those options later on because this is the very purpose of us coming together. 

Now, Ella, we've had some recent chats about fundraising. A little bit of your challenges as well. And some of your strategies actually in, in thinking about who to raise from, how to be strategic, do you raise now?

Do you raise later? Walk us through your process about thinking through, as you hear Fatou talking about dilution here and all that. I mean, you've been in the family business world, so somewhat you've seen this, right? This is not your first rodeo, although you’re young. 

Ella Jade: 

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I have sort of an interesting hybrid of, sort of different approaches here.

So I was in a family business. My father, he created one of the biggest, uh, bathroom companies in the UK and I essentially learned everything from him. He unfortunately passed away and after that point it was very much… I understood that industry, but I saw a gap in the industry as to what hadn't been achieved yet.

And that's why we started ROOBBA. And so with that, we understand there's a lot of different dynamics in terms of, interestingly, what is focused in terms of investment. There are different parts of investment in different parts of the world that people like to invest in. And I'm sure we can probably touch upon that, but we are obviously, in our brand, we've got manufacturing.

We've got AI technology, which is a buzzword at the moment, which is actually amazing to have, but it's also very important to our company. We don't just do it just to have, you know, the AI, we genuinely are really passionate about it. What's really interesting in terms of our strategy is you'll get different conversations from different people all around the world.

For example, if you go to a UK based either VC, Family Office, Private Equity, we had a conversation with the founder of New Look and he have a family office not too long ago. I'm very interested in terms of this company and our company, which is fantastic. They are very production-led in terms of their manufacturing arm and they understand product, and so that was the focus there.

Whereas when we went to San Francisco earlier this year, they only wanna invest in AI. So I think as a founder, you always want to understand who you're talking to and what you're going to have that conversation with. Almost in San Francisco, the concept of manufacturing is an absolute, like they have no idea what that means. They don't even wanna touch it. 

But in the UK it's the complete opposite. They don't really, not really bothered about, I mean not in terms of every VC, but in terms of who we were talking to, it was not really about the AI. So for us to have both people on our board and have both people as investors is very, very important.

And that's actually why we have now in, well, we actually had a, already a seed. We've gone through the seed fund, so we have our seed fund done. They're not actually UK based. They are actually New York private equity firms, VC and family offices in America, which actually is very, very important to us because our next expansion point this year, well next year coming is to take over America with ROOBBA.

But our next round now is focused on joining two very, very big powerhouses when it comes to, in terms of who we are talking to for our investors, I can't name names at the moment, but fundamentally they are, one is very product driven and very manufacturing driven. So in America you're looking at Walmart, that type of focus. And they have an investment arm within them. 

And then the other side is AI and tech focused. And so having two of those investors on our board and obviously as investors is very, very powerful to us as a company. The other thing I will say is equity is absolutely key. We retain as much equity as possible and the one strategy that we have, are working on at the moment is, and we talked about this actually earlier this year. 

Sarah and I had a conversation when we were going to, uh, San Francisco and we were actually really ready to raise our Series A at that point. Really keen to go into San Francisco and Silicon Valley and raise our series A. We decided not to because I'm very grateful for this. Our company started to expand drastically after that conversation and the revenue expansion, and what we've achieved this year is ah, far outweighs our targets than what we've set out earlier than that. 

And so we are riding the wave, we are riding the wave to get to a point, to get to a point of valuation, to get to a point of revenue that we can then go to, which we're now talking to our investors, new investors, the next board of investors at a much higher valuation to retain our equity. And so that is our strategy now and I hope that that will pay off. 

SCS:

Yeah. Very smart. So Mo, as you are hearing these, I guess these two tiers of the GP, the founder. Thinking about the ecosystem, what are your thoughts here on the last couple of viewers? I mean, 2021 was a high despite Covid, and yet liquidity hasn't been as uh, positive as it could be.

What are you seeing on the LP and what are your thoughts in terms of 2025? I mean, it's, gosh, it's already November. 

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

Yeah, it's true. I think venture capital as an asset class is more exciting than ever. I think LPs are, you know, really want to allocate, especially LPs that have 10 or plus years of experience, we call them the more professionalized ones. They can take on a little bit more risk and can see the upside in the asset class. But the bar is super high, right? 

So the exit, you know, market pretty much shut, essentially. We're seeing some upsides coming, but liquidity is an issue. DPI is an issue. I mean, and a lot of LPs got burnt right during those overallocation periods. So there was a little bit of a reluctance, they were sitting on the sideline.

What I did realize though is that there wasn't… there wasn't a conversation about I will not invest. It was very much, I'm sitting on the sideline and I'll come back to the market very soon. So it's very different to like 2008, right? So it was a slightly different way to look at liquidity or a liquidity crisis of sorts.

So I think that is picking up and every conversation I've had with LPs in the last sort of year has been relatively positive coming back into the ecosystem. But like I said, the bar is super high. Pension funds are excited, which is great. And especially for female led GPs, I'm seeing a bit more allocation there.

And something else I find personally exciting is that I do think there's a lot more focus on specialized funds more than ever. And a lot of LPs historically have been focused on generalists, which again limits our access to more female GPs. And I find that there are a lot more women in the specialized areas like life sciences and deep tech.

There is a talent shortage on the engineering side. Unfortunately, and actually we've gone a little bit backwards, which is a sad piece of data to share, but I do think that there are more women on the GP side actually coming out on the emerging market, so we do need to look at the stock at every point.

SCS: 

How do you think 2025 will pan out? I mean, I see a lot of eager GPs in the audience here. As you know, they're still planning their fundraisers. Some of them have been fundraising for some time. We know that, it's been tough out there. It's been a fundraising winner for many, including those in fund one, fund two, fund three.

So the definition of emerging funds for many, it's fund one, fund two, fund three, early in the journey. How will 2025 pan out if you had a crystal ball? Lady? 

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

Crystal ball. I mean, it's my job to be optimistic as a vc, so we're always a little bit optimistic, so I think it's gonna be a little bit more clearer in terms of the deployment cycle.

What I love to see is, I've seen it out across the board, not just female GPs, but emerging managers that have like used this period to hustle, right? They've hustled in many ways, they've warehouse deals. They have like brought deals to LPs and been like, listen, I really like this one. Do you wanna do it?

Do you wanna do this one with me or do you wanna allocate? It just shows that they are in the market, they know what good looks like and they're engaging with their LPs. It's a long-term game. You're not gonna be able to get an LP and after three interactions, sometimes it's two, three years of knowing someone and then finally the deployment cycle opens up and you're the first call, right? 

So I think seeing those long-term relationships is quite powerful and I would encourage people to keep doing it. And 2025 should be an opening, I think. 

SCS: 

Yeah. And Wiem, of course AI is the topic of the hour, but you've been building in machine learning for the longest time. We were with one of the PayPal Mafia recently in Singapore, Jack Selby, and he actually said this because he manages the Thiel Family Office.

If there's a startup that is not innovating in ai, it's almost a risk for us, because very quickly there will be another startup that could blow this out of the water because of AI. As someone who's an expert, who's building from an engineer background, is this a valid strategy that VCs have that you know, AI has to be in everything?

How are you thinking about your own strategy emerging as the winner among the competition? Because everybody is in ai, right?

Wiem Gharbi: 

It is an important question is, should all of the capital get concentrated into artificial intelligence? Obviously there are other innovations that are happening out there, like a lot of like companies that are doing great things.

However, I do think that this is like a pivotal moment that we're seeing right now, like the advances that we're seeing in that like infrastructure layer and the model layer and the application layer perhaps not been possible before. And I think allocating more capital into artificial intelligence and into women also building in artificial intelligence, will kind of help create more progress for us as humanity. 

And I do think that the pivotal moment will become more clear as like large organizations as governments, as enterprises start to actually harness products into gains from artificial intelligence. We are kind of helping the next generation of like companies actually get started.

And the key kind of piece that is critical is that. These are companies that are quite capital intensive because it takes a lot of money to train models, uh, to recruit talent. Competition is fierce again, and having like engineers that actually know how to work with these tools. So I do think that if there's a moment, that moment is now and it needs to be seized.

SCS: 

If I were to make it specific, and I wanna just give a note for everyone to think of your questions because we'll open it up. This is interactive. This is your time to ask, but just to finish up on this point here. 

For capital allocators that are thinking about, I mean, frankly, they're pressured by their LPs to say, are you guys investing in AI? How are you delivering returns in AI? For the founders who are now building, they're like, wait a minute. I have to be in AI to get capital. 

How would you advise these two pockets of personas in the ecosystem to be building an AI today? 

Wiem Gharbi: 

For investors, I would say, look at companies that are trying to like actually solve real problems and deliver real and measurable value. I think there's a lot of like hype, in that actually trying to think critically about what type of tools will help actually generate progress for us as humanity. 

Meaning that we need to engage which companies are building in AI for defense, AI for government, AI for Biotech, for Pharmaceuticals, for protein generation. All of these topics are critical for the advancements of, like us, we are, how we're going to kind of continue growing as a society. 

So I would like, encourage everyone to like, have a critical lens on like, where is the capital getting deployed, what type of companies, what type of like applications. And then for the founders out there is thinking about it. Where can this be additive in your business? Like, it cannot be just like a shiny tool that you can attract, like capital. It needs to be something that is fundamental, that actually is changing the way that you do things. And like to be like AI first.

As in think about your data. How are you preparing your entire kind of data and like tech stack for you to be able to like actually leverage these tools? So it needs to be something that is like actually unique and like value additive for the founders, unique and value additive for the actual LPs, for it to matter.

SCS: 

Yeah, absolutely. And now I'd like to open it up for questions. I see a couple of hands already raised. Yes. 

Nzube (Audience): 

Hi, Nzube Afodeke. I sit on the industrial advisory board for the Queen Mary University of London, and I was keen to get your thoughts on where academia fits into this. We have a department, the Queen Mary Innovations Department, and we spun out quite a few companies from there.

Some are turning over millions. So keen to get your insights on how you interact with academia. 

Ella Jade: 

I think Sarah and I are absolutely the right people to talk to about this because like we are obsessed with that. Having been from Kings in terms of like we literally, that was our lives at Kings. It was not the degree.

Even though we did got a degree still. It was King's Business Club and I think I, I don’t know about Sarah, but I learned everything pretty much from that club. More so maybe than the degree. So as an advocate, I would say that what we need to put into education, not just in maybe the outside of just the degree, but also internally within the degree is life experience.

Like what it takes to actually run a business. What that means, having students not just in the classroom. I think there needs to be, like, on the ground, either the, there's a type of budget that is put towards like actually starting some sort of company within your time and your degree, or it's working as a placement. More so as placement students or something within the entire ecosystem of the university.

Like we had the business club that gave us the experience like running a business, we are absolutely advocates of that. So I absolutely, I think it needs to be very much pushed towards not only just universities, schools, like from a young age, and I think it needs to come from the top. But in terms of government, regulation and policy.

SCS: 

Yeah. And, and if I may add, just because we have a success story. You know, one of our friends was building in the basement of a dodgy bar in Elephant and Castle. Those of you who knew Elephant and Castle back in the day will remember this. But that's what, because we didn't have the support, frankly, I was the founder as well for the King's College on the business club.

So Ella was junior to me, but we didn't have the support of the university, so we had to have our meetings in this dodgy bar office. That I can still remember and smell. These two guys who, essentially, I think they both dropped out right in the end, and then came back and finished it. But they exited their company, sold it to Blackstone, $750 million. 

Fatou Diagne: nice 

SCS: 

Years later, and that's how wealth is generated.

But of course, remember back in the day, we're aging ourselves a little bit. Entrepreneurship wasn't as cool as it is today. And so for you as, you know, the representative of academia bringing us in, I think would be absolutely key in showcasing that this is also a path for success. And that it's hard.

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

It's true. I will just add, I do, it's like 10% of patents come from women, right? It's tiny, like it's a really small amount of IP that we're generating. I do have one qualm. Sometimes I think that the ownership structure that universities offer founders is a bit of a hindrance, right? 

So the incentive to be able to give up so much, so much of your company so early without knowing where it's even going to pivot is a bit of a challenge. And that kind of differentiates us between the US founders I meet, there's a little bit of like, I wanna build a company, I have no idea what it is yet. 

And we're like, I've got this amazing idea, but I have no idea how to make this into a functioning business model. Right? So there's a little bit of a mentality difference, and I think universities can play a huge role in bringing entrepreneurship in.

I think Kings is actually doing a decent job at that. And there are other universities across sort of London, and the UK doing this. Bristol, I mean, how many unicorns there? I think it's like 10 or something. There's great, there are great hubs of talent across the uk, but we need to think about this ownership problem a little bit.

SCS: 

Next question. 

Audience: 

Hi, I'm Dr. Vian Sharif. I'm the founder of Nature Alpha. We're the Bloomberg of environmental data with GEO AI. At the heart of what we do, we support investors. Thank you so much for a wonderful, wonderful panel and incredibly inspirational stories. I wonder if you could help us or help me understand, we are talking about the billion dollar brew.

Does that mean there's a billion dollars somewhere for us as female founders to access? And if so, would you mind helping us understand how to. 

Are we saying this, is this a network of funders that makes up the billion? 

SCS: 

Yes, it's a consortium of funds, so if you go on our website, we have 127 funds as of today that have all pledged a dollar amount to be invested in you, women founded companies. You still have to be driving Alpha, meet the criteria, do all of the work, but they've made a conscious commitment that we want to look for great female founders innovating. 

Shelly Porges: 

For asking about our website and the 127 funds, we built a filter for female founders to put in, or for anybody. It's an open website for sector, stage, and geography, and you can find the funds that might align with what your business is. So again, no guarantees of investment, but at least it gets you closer to a source that could be meaningful for you. 

And then it's up to you, of course, to do your research and to develop the relationships that you need around that fund. Like you said, it's a relationship business. It's not a overnight, remember, it's a marriage too. Yeah. It's after you get into bed with this fund, you all, all have to live together for a while, so don't forget to make really smart selections as you've been hearing. 

SCS: 

And of course part of the Billion Dollar Brew convening structure is that we haven't investor roundtable before. So you are guaranteed when you attend, to meet at least 20 investors that are interested in investing in women. 

And has something to add very quickly on the resource for you. Anne.

Anne Ravanona: 

It's just, it's perfect timing. So I'm Anne, founder and CEO of Global InvestHer, and I was commissioned by Karolina and Dell Technologies to build on the work that Dell has been doing for many years.

Do you know about the WECities report? So that is a global report that's been done several, over several years. The latest one was last year, and it basically ranks the top cities in the world for women entrepreneurs. 

The top 55 cities, guess who's number one? Yes. So London is number one. How many of you are women entrepreneurs? Hands up. Okay. Everybody see them. 

Together with Dell Technologies. I said to Karolina, this is amazing work that WECities report, particularly for policy makers in each city to see what we can do. But what if we went a bit further and what if we did a funding blueprint, but of the different sources of funding and different communities available in specific cities. 

So we've done five cities to begin with, Austin, Bangalore, Sydney, Paris, and London. There are 145 sources of funding in here and different resources for you. 

So we outline the general sources of funding in the city. The ones that are women founders specific, the business communities and other sources, and it's dilutive and non-dilutive.

So that's the thing, it's a funding menu out there, but when you're looking at funding, you need to look at all different sources of funding. It's not all about VC, okay? So that's a very important message. And at Global InvestHer, we have a funder directory as well, global directory of sources of funding that are women founder friendly. So come talk to me. 

SCS: 

Yeah. Awesome. Next question. 

Lavinia (Audience): 

Thank you for such a great talk. My name's Lavinia. I run a platform called Women in Blockchain Talks. I started it because I wanted to be the Oprah Blockchain and just shed a light on women founders or women entrepreneurs and builders in the space. And in doing so, I now help women to become builders and entrepreneurs in that space. 

And so I heard a lot of talk about AI. Well, what are your thoughts on blockchain? Obviously we've seen with the election, the bull market is coming back. So what are your thoughts on, uh, blockchain and business and incorporating in business and getting funding for not crypto, blockchain. Particularly blockchain for good, thank you. 

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

One of our prominent companies is Ledger. Yeah, so it's a crypto wallet, but what's really impressive about that is that it's, it's not so much about crypto that it is the, the blockchain is the fundamental part of it, and we're backing the infrastructure. And I think there is a thesis around that and, and I think a lot of investors do believe that there's a difference between the liquidity bit of the crypto, which I don't think people wanna touch because that's like the hedge fund world and the risk is too high there. 

But as an infrastructure, like why not? Right? I mean, it's the completely thesis. We also did settlement, which was the section sort of web2, Web3, so yeah, it's on thesis for us. It's kind of like AI, B2B SaaS. Like I see all of these as they're tools, right? And to sort of alienate one tool will kind of close off an entire market.

So that's why we actually think in terms of business models. So we don't think sectors, we think enterprise SaaS, we think consumer, think deep tech, think hardware. These are the ways that we sort of structure our thesis points. And within that there's so much intersection. So yeah, I mean that's definitely a thesis point that we're interested in.

SCS: 

Yeah, and my boss just told me it's the last question. Key takeaway, just one sentence for our founders and funders in the room. Let's start with Wiem. 

Wiem Gharbi: 

Well, I think it's important to make sure as capital allocators and as founders that we have like women in the room when it comes to both, like ensuring that we are allocating capital and things that will help make sure that like women are represented and they're creating things that actually kind of matter and scale and create revenue, but also that are well positioned to create the like next generation of builders and founders.

Which means like ensuring that there's the right access to direct talent pools to mentorship to pushing them into STEM. All of this is both at like how you allocate the capital into their companies, but also what you're doing at the base that actually make it happen. 

SCS:

So look around the table, ask who's not here and who's not speaking up. I think that's important. I see both men and women in the room, and we welcome you here because the intention behind the work that we do is, you know, this needs to be our start issue. 

Women's issue is not women's issue alone. Right? It's our societal progress. And it's more for GDP, it's investing in women's just good business. So, uh, thank you for that. Mo, key takeaway.

Mohadeseh Abdullahi: 

That I wanna live in a world where we don't have to invest out of specialized funds. We just invest out of main funds and in good companies. And I think that's what I aspire to and I think that's what we'd like everyone here to aspire to as well. 

So if you feel like there is a specialized fund that might limit your chances of getting bigger pools of capital in the future, maybe actually aspire for the bigger one, you know. Go for the main pools of capital and question why they're not investing out of that one. 

Fatou Diagne: 

I would like to bring something as a non-European to this room. I'm considered a double minority, being a woman, being black, but I grew up in where I was a majority. Coming into Europe, I never had the minority mentality. I never had the mentality of I'm a woman, so therefore capital is limited to me, or this is where my horizon stops. 

And I would encourage everyone to think a little bit outside of that perspective. Don't limit yourselves. The worst thing you could do is try to fit within the expectations of what society or mandate for you. Just disregard them. If you have some, disregard them. If you notice them, fight them. 

But really just see yourself as an entrepreneur, as an investor. And go play on that field that we pull trying to level, because I think that's the only one you get like a diverse world. You have diverse investment, diverse returns, and then profitable that sort of.

Ella Jade: 

I think my key takeaway, and I hope that I can give a little bit of… a one line piece of advice is harness your power as a woman, as a female. Never segregate yourself from being, as being a woman. If you find yourself that you are in a room, in a meeting, in an investor board meeting full of men, and you are the only woman there, you are the power.

You are the power as a woman and harness, and use that to trust me. And if it is tough, know that it will get better. Never give up because the people that always keep going will always win. 

SCS: 

And on that note, I actually wanna bring it home. You know, I started the conversation I opened today, with that 2% number and it can be discouraging. But I'll end today and I hope you all will agree with me, that all of you in the room would've answered the question. ‘Hell yes, I'll apply for that job’ and all of you here today by showing up for each other, for yourself, proving that you're the best person for this damn job. 

You're doing that, so congratulations. Please give yourselves a pat on the back. We don't get often. And a round applause for my panel here.