I have noticed that women love mentoring. We love seeing the best in someone and we are good at drawing that potential out. We desire to share our hard-learned lessons so that others can skip over our mistakes and progress further than we ever did. The look on another woman’s face when she has a realization she would not have gotten on her own is priceless to us.

On May 26, 2016, our Hera Fund Wingpact Founder Funder Conversation was all about this. We had a unique opportunity to discuss “Raising the Next Generation of Women Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors” with Wingpact Founding Partner Jagruti Bhikha and her daughter Priya Bhikha. Jagruti and Priya are one of the very few mother-daughter angel investor pairs we know, and they also are engaged together in advancing the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs around the globe.

When we spoke with Jagruti and Priya, they were calling in from Hong Kong, where they were about to attend the RISE Tech Conference together. They had been traveling throughout Malaysia, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, learning about the developing innovation ecosystems in those places.

We heard from Priya and Jagruti about creating role models and bridging generations. As the conversation progressed, multiple interwoven and related threads emerged.

Jagruti has had a long-standing passion and commitment to supporting and mentoring women entrepreneurs around the world. Through her involvement and leadership in projects such as Grace Hopper Celebration India, Women Entrepreneur Quest, Jagriti Yatra, and the first women-only hackathon in India, Jagruti Bhikha has mentored thousands of women worldwide.

Priya shared how her mother originally helped her get involved with angel investing. And, even as part of the “younger generation,” Priya is a global mentor in her own right. On this trip, Priya also visited Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Tokyo. In each locale, she has been connecting with women business owners and entrepreneurs and sharing ideas with them about how they might grow their businesses and have a bigger impact on their families and communities.

During the course of this conversation, we discovered we were each involved in concentric circles of mentoring: in our families, communities, and the world.

Silvia Armitano Mah, Founder of Hera Labs and Hera Fund, has life experience that mirrors the circles of influence that the Bhikha family demonstrates. Every day, through Hera Labs, Silvia supports women entrepreneurs in her community of San Diego to help them step up and bring their businesses to the next level. At the same time, Silvia carries a global perspective. She had two guests from Russia on the call with us who are part of a growing connection and exchange that Silvia is building with the St. Petersburg innovation community. Meanwhile, Silvia is raising three children and teaches them about things like what makes a company investible.

I can relate to the experiences of Silvia, Jagruti, and Priya. I am also a mom, I have been a mentor for many women in my community, and I share the passion for building bridges between women across continents and cultures to advance opportunity for women.

What we discovered is that for us, the “pipeline” for women entrepreneurs is not a linear thing, as it is usually described. We as women have multiple concentric interwoven connections with others through which we mentor and support other women. We connect in our families, our communities, and around the globe. These are not separate activities for us, they are all integrated into the fabric of our lives. And our roles are fluid and overlapping, as demonstrated by Priya learning from her mother at the same time she mentors women entrepreneurs throughout Southeast Asia.

How do we find the time and energy to have this level of influence in so many spheres? Our answer is work-life integration. We don’t have separate times and spaces for our different relationship and responsibilities – we integrate it all together. For example, Silvia talks around the dinner table about some of the due diligence she is doing on investment opportunities, and sometimes even brings her kids into the process to evaluate kid-facing products. Jagruti uses her travel time with her daughter(s) to attend tech and innovation events with them.

These characteristics and habits of integration, mentoring, interweaving, and support are powerful practices that come naturally to women.

Women are also globally-oriented, and naturally connect with other women in different places and cultures. As Jagruti says, “Every culture has a different set of challenges, but the common thread is that the support of other women is important to us all.” Using our habits of thinking multi-dimensionally and addressing multiple goals at the same time, we women can simultaneously address global, community, and family challenges in very context-sensitive and effective ways.

Our conversation was a hope-inspiring revelation of these feminine passions and methodologies. It’s important to identify, own, and celebrate these powerful integrated and connected ways of working, so we can leverage them to maximum benefit. If we can do this, we will certainly be able to move faster toward global solutions and opportunity for all.

You can view this entire conversation on YouTube, and hear more about specific practices the participants use in their mentoring.

Our next Hera Fund Wingpact Founder Funder Conversation will be held on Thursday, June 23, 4-5pm PST, and will feature Valentina Vitols, Pipeline angel from Seattle. Join the conversation - follow Hera Fund on Facebook and watch for the link to the hangout.

For more about nurturing the pipeline of women angel investors, check out Wingpact’s new book, Impact With Wings, the first book for women about angel investing.

Finally, for more conversations like this one and much more, don’t miss the Hera Venture Summit in San Diego on September 17, with sessions for women entrepreneurs, women angel investors, and building bridges between them.

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Also published on Suzanne Andrews' blog, Bring Your Own Table.

On April 28, 2016, we held a Hera Fund Wingpact Founder Funder Conversation, with the topic of, “Diversity in Women’s Entrepreneurship and Investing.” We were led by special guests Jackie Gutierrez, Founder and CEO of Cloud & Clover, and Lilibeth Gangas, Co-Founder of Somos ChangeMakers and Startup Digest Curator at TechStars.

Our conversation was rich, open, multi-dimensional, and inspiring. This article highlights the most concrete takeaways contributed by the very wise women gathered. View the entire conversation to experience the full depth of the session.

Network Network Network

Latina entrepreneurs often have limited access to the networks they need to build businesses and get funding. Jackie Gutierrez has focused intensely on building a network for herself. She was one of the first cohorts of entrepreneurs at the Manos Accelerator, a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley that focuses on supporting Latin American entrepreneurs. For Jackie, “the world opened up” through Manos. 

Women’s professional groups are great places to network and connect with women who are professional, accomplished, and may be angel investors. In Phoenix, where Jackie is based, she participates in Ellevate Network. Jackie encourages entrepreneurs to build relationships with and find mentors who are angel investors, because this has helped her understand the investor view on business, which further helps build relationships that will eventually lead to funding opportunities.

It is often difficult for women with limited access to networks to find technical co-founders. Jackie shared a solution she developed – attending hackathons and coding meetups to establish relationships with technical people. As a bonus, through these events, she has herself gained understanding of technology needed to support her business. Silvia Mah of Hera Fund suggests organizations like Geek Girl and Girl Develop It to find female technical talent.

• Underrepresented entrepreneurs need more access to accelerators. Kudos to Hera Labs and Manos Accelerator – you are making a huge difference in the lives of your entrepreneurs!
• Entrepreneurs can do a lot of networking to access resources, including professional women’s organizations and tech meet-ups.
• Build bridges between accelerator programs and business communities, including scholarships.
• Continue to raise awareness of realities for underrepresented entrepreneurs.
• Activate more investors.
• Build diversity into companies from the beginning.
• Investors must assess founders’ risk and commitment holistically.

• Women Founders http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/26/female-founders-on-an-upward-trend-according-to-crunchbase/
• Women VCs http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/19/the-first-comprehensive-study-on-women-in-venture-capital/

• Avion Ventures
• Latinas Think Big
• Be Visible
• Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Institute
  • https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/centers-initiatives/ces/research/slei

• http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/news/2016/the-latino-factor-recap

• https://medium.com/life-tips/tech-women-choose-possibility-eba5e605a57d#.emvnmrejo

Entrepreneurs create the future. And women entrepreneurs are underfunded. This is also true of entrepreneurs of color. So who is creating the future? Certain demographics of people have more than their fair share of influence, and the results speak for themselves.

Women have the power to fix this situation. In this excerpt from Impact With Wings:  Stories to Inspire and Mobilize Women Investors and Entrepreneurs, I write that women have a source of power they are not taking full advantage of - their money. When an angel investor funds a company, she determines which products and services have a chance to make it to the marketplace. Not only that, but she is also influencing which world problems get solved, and which business cultures and practices are carried forward. New companies are creating the future in many ways. Angel investors choose which startup companies go to the next level. Now that’s impact!

Watch for the launch of Impact With Wings on May 1.  And if you believe in our vision, support our crowdfunding campaign.

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Excerpt from Impact With Wings, Chapter Two, “Setting the Stage and Unpacking the Trends,” by Suzanne Andrews.

Historically, women have held less social and economic power than men. We see men all around us building large corporations and reaping the profits. We see male venture capitalists, investment bankers, stockbrokers, fund managers, and even prominent male philanthropists. It seems that men control all the money.

But is this really true? In fact, the amount of wealth that women control, as well as the rate at which their wealth is increasing, is reaching extraordinary levels.[1] According to Oppenheimer’s 2006 study “Women and Investing,” more than half of the investment assets in the United States were already controlled by women by that time.[2] Ninety-five percent of women are directly involved in their household’s financial decision making and twenty-five percent are the primary decision-makers.[3] Note that sixty percent of high net-worth women have earned their own fortunes.[4] In addition to developing their own successful careers, women tend to outlive men, and inherit their husband’s and family’s fortunes. These facts lead many experts in the financial planning industry to predict that women will control two-thirds of the wealth in the United States by 2030[5]. While the percentages are smaller globally, women were estimated to control twenty-seven percent of the world’s wealth in 2009,[6] which is enough to create significant influence in their communities and around the world.

Yet, women don’t wield their wealth in the same way men do. We keep quiet about our money, not wanting others to feel uncomfortable. Often, when we make large philanthropic gifts, we do so anonymously. Perhaps our psychology leads us to save our money and take fewer risks with it. I spoke about this with Jackie Gutierrez, Founder and CEO of Cloud & Clover, an online fashion retailer committed to using business for positive social change. She recalled that the businesswomen in her family would use the money they earned to support their families, often more reliably than the men. Perhaps there is a psychology of motherhood, even for those of us who are not mothers. We need to save our money to make sure that our families will be safe. Maybe we feel comfortable taking risks only after the children are cared for.

There are good reasons why women handle their money differently than men do. Pressuring women to behave financially more like men is not a solution. We measure the tradeoffs of risk differently. Our families and our communities benefit tremendously from our responsible and thrifty management of resources. Yet, it may also be true that we are not taking hold of the power that financial resources afford us.

What would happen if women began using our significant financial resources more effectively to create the kind of world where all people share the opportunity to pursue dreams and the potential to succeed? Women can engage in thoughtful and curious conversations and learn from each other about our ingrained belief systems, which drive our behaviors relating to money and risk. Together, we can look deeply at our financial practices and discern which are positive and which are habits that need to be challenged.

There is some evidence that we are already doing this. As women step up to offer their financial resources, they are doing so by funding projects that are important to them. In the realm of philanthropy, women are joining together in groups to evaluate charitable organizations and decide together how to best leverage their donations. The Women Donor’s Network is an example of a large national group that has member-led giving circles as well as numerous strategic initiatives to support women in maximizing the impact of their collective giving. In addition, there is the Women’s Funding Network, the largest philanthropic network in the world devoted to women and girls with more than 120 women’s funds and foundations engaged.

As angel investors, too, we can put our money where our values are, as well as make a financial return. The number of women-focused angel groups is growing, reflecting the increasing number of women interested in leveraging their resources this way. The first all-women angel group in the United States, Seraph Capital Forum, was founded in Seattle in 1998 by Susan Preston, one of the contributors to this book. Golden Seeds, one of the best-known women-focused early-stage investor organizations, started in 2005. We now have groups such as Astia Angels, 37 Angels, and Broadway Angels, to name just a few.

Broadway Angels is an interesting case. As an invitation-only angel group made up of world-class women investors and business executives, their investment thesis does not specify what gender entrepreneurs they invest in. They follow the best opportunities they can find in their massive deal flow. However, a quick scan of their website shows that half of their entrepreneurs are women. This example, and many others, suggests that when women bring their money to the table, opportunities for women entrepreneurs (and perhaps for entrepreneurs from other underrepresented groups) increase.

As Geri Stengel said to me in an email, “Women need to ante up.”

[1] Ettinger, Heather R and O’Connor, Eileen M., Women of Wealth Survey (2011) Family Wealth Advisors Council. available at: http://hemingtonwm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/FWAC_WomenOfWealth.pdf

[2] Quist-Newins, Mary, “Untapped Market: Women May Be Gaining Economic Power, but …” (March 1, 2010), available at www.financial- planning.com/fp_issues/2010_3/untapped-market-2665922-1.html.

[3] Prudential Research Study, “Financial Experience and Behaviors Among Women” (2010-2011), available at http://www.prudential.com/media/managed/Womens_Study_Final.pdf

[4] Stengel, Geri, “11 Reasons 2014 Will Be A Breakout Year For Women Entrepreneurs,” Forbes (Jan. 8, 2014) available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2014/01/08/11-reasons-2014-will-be-a-break-out-year-for-women-entrepreneurs/

[5] Ettinger, Heather R and O’Connor, Eileen M., Ibid.

[6] Damisch, Peter et al, “Leveling the Playing Field” (July 2010) The Boston Consulting Group, available at: http://www.bcg.com/documents/file56704.pdf

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Originally published on Suzanne Andrews' blog, Bring Your Own Table.

On Thursday, March 24, 2016, we held our second monthly Hera Fund Wingpact Founder Funder Conversation. We featured Silvia Armitano Mah on the topic of “Busting the Myth of Risk Tolerance in the Female Investor.” Women angel investors are often accused of being “risk-averse” because of their perceived tendency to take longer to make an investment decision and write smaller checks. We wanted to bring this concern out into the open and have a constructive discussion for the benefit of the women’s ecosystem.

As you know, Silvia Mah is an active angel investor as well as Founder of Hera Labs and Hera Fund. In those roles she often advises women entrepreneurs on addressing potential investors’ perceived risks. She explains that entrepreneurs need to put themselves in the shoes of investors to understand how things look to them.

We know from financial industry research that women generally prefer to have a more complete understanding of investment opportunities before making a decision. The same research also shows that because of this, women investors reap better returns.

Silvia spoke about the plethora of new angel training options designed for women, including Pipeline Angels, 37 Angels, Female Funders, and the Rising Tide Fund. These learning opportunities will increase the comfort level of beginning women angel investors.

Silvia also commented on the many ways women are collaborating in early stage equity investing, and she believes these practices also increase the comfort level and effectiveness of women investors.

J.D. Davids, long-time entrepreneur and startup advisor, shared information about how to manage the risk of an investment after the check is already written. Insisting on regular reports covering milestones, financing plans, and current challenges not only benefits the company but gives the investor some impact on the long-term viability of her investment. Silvia agreed with this and noted that women investors need to feel comfortable asking for what they want and need from their CEOs. Silvia herself insists on being kept abreast of all happenings in her portfolio companies.

J.D. shared an idea that could help the women’s ecosystem fold in new investors effectively. Currently, a lot of angels invest through syndicates. In a syndicate, there is a lead investor who is a subject matter expert in the investee’s business. Other investors follow the lead, contributing their capital but are less involved in the company. While the lead takes the board seat, he or she does not necessarily have to bring as much personal money since he/she is bringing a number of investors. J.D. pointed out that there are plenty of successful women entrepreneurs who could be tapped to lead syndicates in their areas of expertise. This would give new women angels syndicate leaders, role models, learning opportunities, and would also get more women on boards. Here, a theme repeats that came up in our previous Hera Wingpact Conversation – perhaps we are moving in a direction of involving more women each with smaller individual investments.

The topic of transparency was a recurring theme in our conversation. Katya Grishina, a Hera Labs entrepreneur, spoke about the value of transparency on all sides of the table, and how the resulting trust in the relationship positively affects the company's outcome. J.D.’s opinion is that that transparency seems to be easier to to achieve with female founders, in his experience. Mary Stovall of Google for Business expressed appreciation that the women’s ecosystem seems to support transparency, something that is personally very important to her. Silvia added that as an angel she embraces the value of transparency, letting entrepreneurs know up front when their industry is outside her expertise. We agreed that women angels’ (and probably all angels’) concern about risk understandably decreases as perceived transparency from the founder and team increases.

As a wrap-up, Audrey Kalman noted the importance of connection, to other women, as well as within the startup ecosystem. Everyone needs to round out their knowledge by collaborating with others with different expertise.

In summary, this short conversation raised a lot of constructive ideas for addressing the risk tolerance level of women investors. Ideas include:
- Entrepreneurs putting themselves in investors’ shoes
- Training and education geared toward women
- Women’s natural tendency toward collaboration
- Recruit rock-star entrepreneurial women to lead syndicates
- Encourage investors to ask for the information they need
- Practice transparency

For all the criticism women receive about their risk tolerance, at the end of the day we know that women’s desire for information and time for careful decision-making make them more successful investors. Their portfolio companies benefit, and so do their returns. Let’s be careful of criticizing women for their differences from men, especially when those differences are advantageous.

I believe the answer is not in trying to make women behave more like men. Rather, let’s innovate on existing business practices to take advantage of the qualities that women bring to early stage investing. Constructive conversations like these can address women’s unique values and concerns, and the entire ecosystem benefits.

Thank you to this session’s participants for authentically and transparently bringing their creative thinking to building an ecosystem that supports everyone’s success and satisfaction:

Silvia Armitano Mah, Founder Hera Labs and Hera FundJ.D. Davids, Entrepreneur and Advisor
Katya Grishina, Entrepreneur
Audrey Kalman, Author, Editor, Marketing Consultant, and Doula
Mary Stovall, Google for Business
Suzanne Andrews, Founding Partner, Wingpact

Takeaway Actions:

Look for our next Hera Fund Wingpact Founder Funder Conversation on the 4^th Thursday of April, April 28th at 4:00pm PT. The link to the conversation will be on the Hera Fund Facebook Events page. Next month’s topic is diversity in the women’s ecosystem – how to support all women entrepreneurs and investors in gaining access to the resources they need to be successful. We will be led by special guests Jackie Gutierrez, Founder and CEO of Cloud & Clover, and Lilibeth Gangas, Co-Founder of Somos ChangeMakers and Startup Digest Curator at TechStars.

If you would like to be on our email list to receive personal invitations to future Hera Fund Wingpact events, please send us a note through the Wingpact or Hera Fund websites.

Please consider supporting Wingpact’s crowdfunding campaign, to activate women investors and build the ecosystem.

Also watch for the next annual Hera Fund Venture Summit on September 17, 2016 at University of San Diego, with a keynote from Alicia Robb and Trish Costello.

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Also published on Suzanne Andrews' blog, Bring Your Own Table.