Soar Higher: July 2016

Latina Women Make Great Angel Investors

7/19/2016

On June 23, 2016, we had the delight of hosting Valentina Vitols for our Hera Fund Wingpact Conversation. Monthly Hera Fund Wingpact Conversations are convened by Silvia Mah, Founder of Hera Fund and Hera Labs, and Suzanne Andrews, Founding Partner of Wingpact.

Valentina Vitols is a Latina angel investor, a Pipeline Angels member, co-founder of the Seattle Women’s Impact Fund, and active in her Seattle innovation ecosystem. She actively seeks out Latina women to bring into her community of angel investors.

Valentina shared with us about two topics that she is passionate about – activating Latina angel investors, and developing deal flow - both areas that rely heavily on relationship-building.

Both Silvia and Valentina are from Venezuela, are angel investors who support women entrepreneurs, and are passionate about finding more Latinas to become part of this movement.

Latina Women Make Great Angel Investors

These observations from Valentina’s and Silvia’s personal experiences as active members of their communities explain this major takeaway from our discussion, that Latina women in general are especially well-suited to be angel investors.

First, Latinas tend to enjoy building relationships, and they are good at it! Networking, meeting new people, and talking with them about their interests comes naturally. Women actively share deals, and the process of making of meaningful connections between entrepreneurs and other investors is very satisfying.

Secondly, Latinas are currently becoming more active and interested in investment decision-making. Latinas tend to make safe, structured investments, and at the same time, they are fearless. With education about the process and the community benefits, many would enjoy the enriching experience of a new kind of investing.

Latinas are also very generous as shown by their commitment to philanthropy. Supporting other women is near and dear to their hearts. Angel investing involves a more personal relationship than other kinds of investing. We have the opportunity to develop warm, personal relationships with entrepreneurs and activate our nurturing sides. Valentina finds she is always learning, having fun, and being enriched by the entrepreneurs she meets.

Valentina observes a paradigm shift in how women are investing, in ways that express our values and lifestyle needs. We are supporting companies that are creating new structures that meet the needs of how women need to work. For example, many of our startups provide freelance jobs, which work well for moms juggling multiple responsibilities.

How to get more Latina women involved in angel investing

In general, Latinas are especially relationship-focused so networking and word-of-mouth is a great way to bring women in. Latina communities are scattered – we need to find and educate them about the opportunities and benefits of angel investing. Latina women qualified to be angel investors are out there. A particular group of Latinas ripe for angel investing is women ready to come back to the work force, and looking for meaningful, high-impact work. When women understand the positive social impact of angel investing, they will be interested. Silvia says, “If you are supporting your community with philanthropy already, why not find a Latina entrepreneur to invest in?” Connecting potential Latina investors with Latina entrepreneurs is another way to inspire women to get involved in angel investing.

Reaching out to the media is effective, observed Valentina. There is a lot of information available for women about becoming entrepreneurs but not much for women who might be interested in investing. (Check out Wingpact’s new book, Impact With Wings, which was written to show women readers why angel investing could be empowering and satisfying for them.)

Valentina expressed her dream that there could be a class of new angel investors who are all Latina, like the recent Pipeline Angels cohort in Atlanta that was all African-American.

Deal Flow Comes Naturally to Latinas

Valentina said finding potential companies to invest in is one of her favorite parts of angel investing. She gets to network, talk to a lot of people, see their excitement, and talk with them a lot about what they care about.

Silvia and Valentina advise entrepreneurs who are looking to become part of investors’ deal flow to take advantage of opportunities to go meet angel investors. Both Hera Fund and Valentina offer regular open hours for any entrepreneur who wants to come and connect.

Next Steps

Valentina closed our conversation by encouraging women to think about angel investing, no matter what your background is. There is a need for your expertise, and some entrepreneur will definitely benefit from what you bring. Valentina offered to make herself available to any Latina women who would like to connect with her about angel investing.

This was a very rich conversation, with only the briefest highlights reported here. Watch the full session on YouTube.

Attend the Hera Venture Summit to learn more about angel investing and connect with women angels. There will be a number of Latina women angels attending, many from Tijuana. Sept 17, 8:30am-7pm, at the University of San Diego. Register here.

Come meet the authors at the Impact With Wings San Diego launch. This historic book is the first for women about angel investing. August 17.

Watch for the Fast Pitch in preparation for the Hera Venture Summit.

Join our next Hera Fund Wingpact Conversation with Amy Chang, The Pros and Cons of Joining Angel Networks, on Thursday July 21, 4-5pm on Google Hangout.

Let’s keep on investing and building bridges!
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Also published on Suzanne Andrews' blog, Bring Your Own Table.

angel investor

Calling All Smart, Connected Women: Investing in Entrepreneurial Companies is Good for You and the World!

7/16/2016

Here's a guest post by Trish Costello, CEO/Founder of Portfolia and CEO Emeritus and Founder of Kauffman Fellows. Trish is a huge Wingpact supporter and is extensively interviewed in Impact With Wings. In this article, Trish explains clearly (and with humor you will enjoy) why investing in companies creates the future and why, at this time in herstory, women are uniquely qualified to do it.
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Calling All Smart, Connected Women: Investing in Entrepreneurial Companies is Good for You and the World!

by Trish Costello, Founder/CEO of Portfolia — An entrepreneurial investing platform designed for women. CEO Emeritus & Founder, Kauffman Fellows.

(Originally published on Medium, June 21, 2016.)

This past week, I joined 5,000 women in Washington DC to imagine a new world for women. Sponsored by the White House, the United State of Women Summit was an eye-popping, star-studded event of epic proportion. The line-up of speakers included the President and Michele Obama, Billie Jean King, Oprah, Jessica Alba, Amy Poehler, Shonda Rhimes, Gloria Steinem, and Patricia Arquette, to name just a few. It was exciting and awe-inspiring. I was thrilled to be included as a speaker, sharing the vision and goals of our company, Portfolia.

But the true measure of this Summit isn’t the number of eye popping celebs (as cool as it was!) but its ability to bring us together to rapidly increase the pace of change for women. How do we work together to create the world we want? Each session was filled with high energy women leading massive change agendas. But for these audacious visions to become reality, the energy must move beyond these 5,000 women to 50+ million women. And it begins with us speaking our visions:

At Portfolia, we believe the world will shift when women use their money and influence to green-light the entrepreneurial companies, products and innovation we want in the marketplace.

(You may be thinking: OMG!! Investing in entrepreneurial companies? I don’t know how to do this. I hate spreadsheets. I don’t even open my investment statements. Don’t I need an MBA? Do I have time? Could I really do this?— Stick with us — We’ll come back to this,OK?)

There are five ways you shift the world when you invest:

1) Your priorities decide which new companies, teams and products get funding and come to market. When women make these decisions different companies are selected. 90%+ of entrepreneurial investors are men, and –no surprise — 90%+ of their investment dollars go to other men, solving problems that men are most aware of. No foul here, it’s just how it works.

When women make investment decisions, they are more likely to select products and services that speak to them, to a gap in the marketplace, to their needs, and that of those around them, business or personal. If we want funding going to the products and innovations we seek, we need to be putting a small amount of our investment dollars behind companies we want in the market.

2) You shift ‘The Ick Factor,’ which determines what investments are NOT made. This is the reverse of the first point, but important enough to stress separately. What companies and products DON’T get funded because they make the traditional guy investor uncomfortable? Again — no surprise — what turns off men may be exactly what you would love to have in the marketplace.

For example: A few years ago, I saw a presentation for an amazing new breast pump. I was captivated by the team and technology, as was every woman who saw it. I was shocked when I heard that they had been turned down by a number of investors, so I talked to a few of them. This is when I discovered a very technical investing criterion that I have since named “The Ick Factor.” Though it was a radically better technology in a huge market, it made the guys feel ‘icky’ because they were embarrassed and uncomfortable talking about breasts in this context. (Really, friends, you don’t need to be intimidated by the level of analysis here ;-)

I’ve since discovered many ‘Ick Factor’ companies — in women’s health, reproduction, plus-sized clothing, active aging, caretaking — and they’re some of our very best investments. We all have our ‘Ick Factors’ though. Mine? I passed on Bang with Friends, which had some top male investors lined up to back them.

3) You know markets, products and people — the trifecta of analyzing entrepreneurial investing. Years ago, when entrepreneurial companies were almost entirely made up of huge computer systems and hardware sold to the government or Fortune 100 companies, men engineers were understandably the investment gods. Today, the majority of companies gaining early investing dollars are consumer facing or business services sold below the C-suit. Women, we own this world, and it’s time for us to take our rightful place as investment mavens.

Women buy 80% of all products in the US, and are the majority purchasers in nearly all major categories except big screen TVs (only men buy TVs larger than their bodies). We know the brand players, the competitors, the market gaps, competitive advantages, pricing and channels.

And in the most important space of evaluating people and teams, there is a world of data showing that women are actually better in evaluating individuals, seeing through hyperbole, and understanding the context, connections and disconnections in and among teams. Early entrepreneurial analysis is not about reams of spreadsheets, but about people, markets and products. Women, we get this.

4) Your knowledge and networks add value to our companies, as market-makers and connectors. A key premise in investing in entrepreneurial companies is being able to add value beyond your money. As we discussed, the majority of companies seeking private investment dollars are now focused on tech-enabled consumer markets. The majority of consumer purchase decisions are impacted by virality, networks, influencers, and word of mouth. Again, we own this world.

Women are more highly networked, more active on social media, and are highly engaged in sharing products they like and companies that they back. We’re more likely to try new products and services and share the ones we like. We’re also more likely to provide the feedback loop from other important customers.

This is why we at Portfolia like to maximize the number of smart investors in companies. And smart entrepreneurs would rather have their influencers buy into them as investors, rather than take more traditional investor dollars, give up more ownership in their company, then attempt to buy their markets through major advertising and marketing expenditures. Women, we are high-value investors.

5) You create wealth, jobs and opportunity by backing young entrepreneurial companies. Yes, if you feel, well, icky about wealth, please get over it. Certainly you can and will lose money investing in entrepreneurial companies. But over time you invest across a variety of companies to create wealth and opportunity. It can be financially rewarding, and it’s exciting to back teams that are on-fire to create new products and services. This is why men have invested in entrepreneurial companies for years.

For generations, our accepted roles were as volunteers and philanthropists. This is still important of course, but investing in the innovation economy is good for society, for the economy and for you and your family. Taking risks with a small amount of your investable assets (less than 5%) to create wealth and opportunity can be smart and impactful. In fact, you and your family can become entrepreneurial investors together, in your areas of interest and passion. We’re the kinder, gentler, more respectable version of Shark Tank. We nourish our entrepreneurs, not eat them.

Finally, we’re at a truly historic time. For the first time ever, in any culture, women in the US own half of all wealth. We can now create investing processes and cultures that work for us. It’s our time.

We know that investing in companies we believe in can be an exciting and empowering process, as well as enriching. Why else would we do it?

With Portfolia, we will activate over 100,000 women investors in 5 years, investing from $1,000 to $100,000 annually. We intend to invest over $1 billion a year in entrepreneurial companies that we together want to see in the marketplace. We’re investing in Health, Active Aging, SAAS, Media, Green, Children, IOT and Organics, committing one amount annually that is invested in 6–9 companies in each of these industry segments.

And when our companies win, we all win together.

This is how we activate the energy of 5,000 women, and spread it around the world.

This is how we focus our creative economic energy in a new way.

This is how we shift the world.

Latina Women Make Great Angel Investors

Calling All Smart, Connected Women: Investing in Entrepreneurial Companies is Good for You and the World!

Calling All Smart, Connected Women: Investing in Entrepreneurial Companies is Good for You and the World!

At Portfolia, we believe the world will shift when women use their money and influence to green-light the entrepreneurial companies, products and innovation we want in the marketplace.

There are five ways you shift the world when you invest:

We know that investing in companies we believe in can be an exciting and empowering process, as well as enriching. Why else would we do it?

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