Better Than Average But Not Good Enough

Nordic Female Investor Meetup 2021 (NFIM21) is right around the corner. Therefore we have asked our Portfolio Manager, Ida Herbertsson to give us her view on FTC´s successability to support female investors and entrepreneurship.

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Venture Capital investments are far from equal today. Depending on how you measure you will see different numbers but the estimate in most cases is that around 1-2% of the capital goes to female founded companies. If we look at mixed founder teams the number tends to go up slightly, but still not equal. To even the numbers, incubators and investors like Fast Track Capital (FTC) play a crucial role as we many times are the first investor.

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We strongly believe that to have more funding going into female founded companies we need female investors. When we raised money for our third co-investment company, FTC3, (read more about the setup of FTC here) we set a goal of 35% female investors as we wanted to raise the bar from FTC2 which has 33% female investors. Happy and proud to say that we reached 40% female investors and on top of that a few mixed team as well.

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So then why is this important? The simple answer is that there is so much untapped potential of great innovations, products and services created by female founded companies and missing out on these means missing out on lots of potential for creating a better world.

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Then you might ask how good are we at FTC at investing in female founded companies? The short answer is, we are better than average venture capital but we are not where we want to be. We still have things to do to become better.

This our data from the investments done (not taking into account any exits, but only looking at the number of investments and the amount):

As you can see and as said above, we still have a way to go to reach equality in startup investments. What really is equal is partly, as I see it, a philosophical question, but I think most of us agree that it is not equal right now. As investors we have a very important role to play. I believe that one key is to be aware that we as humans tend to judge men and women differently, we ask different questions, see potential and risk different depending on gender. I believe this is both due to societal norms, culture but also biology and it is not by definition always bad. Understanding ourselves better as investors opens up for tapping into huge potential, which is out there among the female founded companies!

If you haven't bought your ticket to NFIM21 yet, make sure to get it now by clicking here!

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About Minc

At Minc, we believe in creating something bigger than yourself. We offer everything an entrepreneur needs to go from concept to market in-house. Our international network of advisors and award-winning programs will help your startup scale faster and smarter. Welcome to the startup house of Malmö.

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