Founder DIVERSITY

Our commitment to investing in women-led startups

In 2022, only 3% of VC funding in Australia went to solely women-founded businesses. As an industry, we need to do more to find, invest in and support incredible women building the next generation of great Australian companies.

Our FY23 data

Recent investments

Cleverbean co-founders Alina Hunter and Lucy Chambers. Read Cleverbean's story.

THE STATS

Let's be honest...

Recently, our friends at Giant Leap and other great funds in the Australian ecosystem committed to putting their gender diversity stats front and centre in an effort to provide complete transparency around how their investments have been allocated. We feel it’s important to also hold ourselves accountable, and be open and honest about where and how we can improve.

Investment benchmark data has been taken from State of Australian Startup Funding Report 2022 (Cut Through Venture)
We define women to include all women, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth, and acknowledge that gender is a spectrum. Mixed teams currently include non-binary founders. We will provide further segmented data at the end of FY24.
Where possible, we want to ensure that gender data is self-reported. For this reason, we have added a field to our Pitch Form which requests (optional) gender identification.

Investment team benchmark data has been taken from Snapshot of Gender Diversity in Private Capital 2023 (Australian Investment Council)
Investment team (11) comprises 5 women: Sarah Morgan (Investment Committee Chair). Maxine Lee, Shahirah Gardner, Justine Lum, Claire Bristow, and 6 men: Rohan Workman, Anthony Glenning, James Crowe, Tom Smalley, Tuong Tran, Rob Greco.

Diverse decision making

Women currently make up 45% of our investment team. We firmly believe that fostering a gender-balanced environment enhances creativity, decision-making quality, and overall success – for our portfolio and investors.

Unconscious biases still persist within our industry and we are committed to raising awareness, promoting diversity of thought, and continuously striving for fairness and impartiality in our investment process.

pipeline Data

Total transparency

From FY23 onwards, we have begun collecting gender data related to our investment pipeline.

This will enable us to provide transparency on the number of women-founded startups pitching us per year, versus the total number of pitches we see.

We intend to publish half year data in December 2023 and full year data in July 2024.

We will also publish ethnic diversity data related to our current portfolio, for the first time.

BETTER OUTCOMES

Economic impact

Research shows that women-led businesses generate 12% higher revenues annually, using an average of a third less capital than their male counterparts. If women and men participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could increase by 6%, boosting the global economy by $5 trillion.

Want to Boost the Global Economy by $5 Trillion? Support Women as Entrepreneurs (BCG)
Accelerating women founders: The untapped investment opportunity (Deloitte)