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Hey! It’s been a minute.
I am grateful to you for letting me speak freely about taking my first steps into venture capital. At the same time as I walk onto this path, I have to leave a relationship or three behind. There’s no easy way to say this - it’s uncomfortable.
Boundaries weren’t really in my life until 2018, and learning to set them has been the most uncomfortable journey I’ve taken in my adult life. I had to lay them in my family lineage, then extend that to my work, then to my community and friendships so that I could access my Self. I’ve learned boundaries are not about just saying “no” they are about understanding your worth and what you want from the inside and then aligning that with your actions, words, and heart on the outside.
Holding boundaries with myself will help me when it’s time for analysis and due diligence of a new company and founding team. How? I have this skillset that is an inside job designed and fortified by life experience that helps me know when someone with vision is in front of me. Especially, when they can intelligently and with sincerity describe systems to me. I want to fund businesses and founders who have a vision that needs care as it makes the market better and changes the category.
OK, next uncomfortable thing. I’ve been struggling with how to expand beyond Femtech, but my curiosity in how we build and fund a better world through ideas and creations is far bigger and broader than this small market. I have a lot of knowledge about this market, being one of the first founders to break into it. And, do I want to write checks to new companies in biopharma and science that are changing how women’s reproductive health research, care, longevity, and solutions to improve the ecosystem are accessed in a fast-growing market at a time when women are aging into their wealth? Yes. 100%.
While my expertise in Femtech has been invaluable, I'm increasingly intrigued by the potential to contribute to larger-scale societal change. This curiosity extends beyond the boundaries of any single market or industry, encompassing a deep-seated desire to catalyze progress in realms as diverse as planetary health and human performance. As I delve into a new frontier, I'm mindful of the seismic shifts underway in the financial landscape, particularly the impending transfer of wealth to women. The convergence of these factors presents a compelling opportunity to reshape our societal norms and economic structures, provided we navigate the current socio-political climate with prudence and resilience.
A new report from McKinsey states, “By 2030, American women are expected to control much of the $30 trillion in financial assets that baby boomers will possess—a potential wealth transfer of such magnitude that it approaches the annual GDP of the United States.” Today, women control a third of total US household financial assets—more than $10 trillion. For those of you in the back of the room - more than $10 trillion. While we’re in what feels like to me a sort of terrifying election year - if we don’t hand over our government to an authoritarian regime - can you imagine what will happen when the women take over the money?
The growing economic influence of women. After taking a backseat for generations, we’re poised to “take center stage,” or as Bey would say, “Who runs the world?” Girls. Women. Women with money, wait not just money, WEALTH, and economic security that help them drive decisions.
And this is where I come to Seeing Systems.
It has come to my awareness lately that I have spent my career seeing where women struggle to fit into the system, and so I take the skills and talents I’ve curated and developed and practiced then begin to alter the existing system so that as a result women feel cared for and they build greater confidence along the way. I see where the systems don’t work for us and make small changes so that there will be big impacts today, tomorrow, and 10 years from now. 20 years from now. Generations from now.
The transfer of wealth to women is going to alter generations to come, but if we don’t evolve the fiduciary and economic systems to align with what women want and their needs - will it truly matter how much money is in our hands?
Now why does this matter to me? March 1st marked the end of a contract with the 501c3 I worked with for 6 months. In an organization that had no infrastructure or systems to care for the funding that was coming in, I worked with their team to build systems that would support their growth. It was an intense, short-burst build.
At this point in my securing capital and fundraising career, I have raised money in:
for-profit via venture capital
non-profits
crowdfunded businesses
raised from friends and family
had angel investors invest in my company
received bank loans and lines of credit (one loan extension was declined because I was single and unmarried at 40, ps..)
I am in the beginning stages of cultivating the plan to build a firm that will attract and serve these high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) and ultra-high-net-worth individual women (UHNWI) (and the women in their families) to advance their economic security while investing in companies that will make infrastructure better in the US and eventually globally.
Venture Capital and Private Equity are forms of banking and part of a system that inherently does not support or is built for women. Nor does wealth advising fit the needs of the majority of women. So if by 2030, American women are expected to control much of the $30 trillion in financial assets - how do emerging managers like myself capture these women and help push the refresh button so that there’s an update to the system?
Taking from James Clear, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” How do I join the small group of women managing and allocating trillions of dollars in assets and help level up the system?
These are the questions in my head as I move forward from being a cog in the Femtech world and into another world designed for men by men to make it a world designed for women by women (*thanks Mom for saying this the other day). It’s hard to leave something you’ve spent more than 10,000 hours developing and you know the ins and outs of intricately.
This space, this ecosystem, moving forward will be a reflection of my experience about women securing capital and how it impacts our lives and will make it better as the money flows into our hands.
Stay if you’re interested. Farewell if you’re not. In the meantime, I am finding the right next job to keep me moving forward. LMK if you know of any open roles where I’d be the right fit.
Reading: Burn Book and Supercommunicators
Ingesting: Any recipe David is making on his new show.
Watching: Someone asked what my favorite food group was the other day. My response: “Travel, then eat.”
Open Tabs: Learn to invest, and if you have teenage girls get them in on this..
Investing: this doesn’t have to be hard.
Thank you for getting this far if you’re reading this, big hugs. BIG hugs!!
xx
Becca