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Data Shows Boston’s Historical Progress In Funding Women

Natasha Mascarenhas — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:41:14 +0000

On a Monday morning in her office on Newbury Street, of said that for venture capitalists to invest in more diverse founders, “we have to drop the idea that a CEO needs to be a braveheart on a white horse.”

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“The personality of a woman is going to be different than a man, so you have to […] understand that someone can be effective, even if they really aren’t aggressive,” the managing director of the firm continued. “It’s about opening the door wider.”

Fay is one of two female partners at Glasswing Ventures, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm focuses on artificial intelligence investments. Notably, about 40 percent of the founding teams of the companies Glasswing invests include at least one woman, according to Fay.

female-led venture capital funds like Glasswing, and venture capitalists like Fay, , a nonprofit organization that wants to help more female founders get venture capital, expanded into Boston last month. Fay is part of the steering committee.

’s expansion shows there’s both a need and a promise for more venture dollars to go to female founders in the city. So, for this month’s Boston-focused column, we thought we’d unpack the dollars raised by teams with at least one woman founder in Greater Boston over time.

First, we’ll do the numbers, then we’ll circle back to Fay to see how it all fits into All Raise’s mission.

The Numbers

Before we get into the numbers, some caveats. Venture rounds are often prey to reporting delays, and, sometimes, founders are not tagged in SA��ʴ�ý with gender identifying characteristics. For this reason, we opted for a proportional split chart to help account for any lag in known data.

Housekeeping aside, $979 million dollars have gone to venture capital-backed companies with at least one female founder so far in 2019, according to SA��ʴ�ý data. Starkly, $1.8 billion dollars went to venture capital companies with all-male founding teams.

To get a more helpful perspective on how (and if) more female founders are getting funded within Greater Boston, let’s wind back to 2014. The chart below breaks down the percentage break down of the data above.

In 2016, 28 percent of venture capital dollars raised by Greater Boston startups went to companies with at least one female founder. Compared to years prior, 2019 isn’t at the same level of equality, but it is also isn’t exactly fair to hold it to the same standards due to possible data reporting delays.��

Fast forward to 2018, and 43 percent of venture capital dollars raised by Greater Boston startups went to companies with at least one female founder. It isn’t a 50/50 split; however, the percentage is notably high. Globally, about 8 percent of venture dollars have gone to female founders, according to the latest quarterly statistics.��

Its historical progress of venture capital dollars going to underrepresented founders—coupled with a stark contrast to global averages—is part of the reason Boston was put on All Raise’s radar in the first place. After all, where better place for a nonprofit to set up a pipeline and network of women in tech than a place that has already taken steps to level the playing field? Now, along with the Boston launch, in the Bay Area, New York, and Los Angeles.��

Goals

All Raise has some lofty objectives it aims to achieve. , the organization wants 25 percent of all venture dollars allocated to female-founded companies. It also wants to double the percentage of female partners at venture firms (with funds greater than $25 million) in the United States from 9 percent to 18 percent over the next ten years.��

To do this, one of All Raise’s flagship efforts has been in creating a database of diverse candidates for venture capital firms to tap into. The organization also has cohorts, where women interested venture positions from associates to general partners can join a “tight-knit groups where deep connections trump empty schmoozing and real conversations replace small talk,” .��

According to Glasswing’s Fay, in Boston, that looks like founder bootcamps, mentorship, and networking opportunities.

Within these efforts, All Raise is intentionally having a conversation beyond just gender, when it comes to shifting pattern recognition in venture funding. “There are a lot of women involved with All Raise who are already successful,” she said. Fay also added that men, alongside women, need to be included in the conversation too.

“If we’re just talking to each other as women to women, then we’re in an echo chamber,” she said. “So it is very important for men to also understand what the experiences are, so they can support us. And I can tell you in Boston, the [venture capitalists] who are men here are great.”

Illustration:

VC Summer Slowdown Hits Boston, Which Has Its Slowest July Since 2014

Natasha Mascarenhas — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 13:00:41 +0000

Greater Boston is home to all the elements that, when combined, make up a fruitful startupland: smart people, established universities, conferences galore, and a healthy dose of local loyalty.1 So, once a month, we’re going to take a look into the Greater Boston startup scene 2 and give you a quick round up on what’s been happening.

Looking at the total venture capital scored by Greater Boston-based startups in July year over year, 2019 was the biggest dip in five years. Thanks to the likes of startups like , , , and more, previous Julys in Boston saw nine-figure rounds. This July, we saw none. See the chart below for more.

The Past Month For Greater Boston

Going back to this July, however, Greater Boston startups raised $183 million through venture capitalists last month, with the majority of that total going toward Seed stage rounds, and then Series A rounds.

That total is a dip from June’s totals, when the same region raised $247 million. The June spike was due to an outsized round from Commonwealth Fusion, a startup which works on complicated concepts like superconducting magnet technology and commercial fusion on energy.

The company raised a $115 million Series A.

As Alex and Mary Ann explained when covering Commonwealth’s round that the startup has some local love in its DNA. Founded in 2017 it was spun out of MIT and works with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Below is a chart of notable rounds raised by Greater Boston-based startups in the past month, .

A slew of companies scored eight-figure rounds. raised $20 million to help with car loans for international students (and raised $130 million in debt financing), Sense raised $10 million to help you better track devices and automate your home, and scored $11 million to aid those who want more flexible work. Although its a tiny round, . raised $1 million to help us all find local music that we love, played live.

On the biotech front, we saw raising $1.8 million to create a non-invasive white blood cell monitoring device. Also, raised a $22 million Series A to focus on immunology.

Excluding Cambridge, a home for biotech startups, Boston-based startups racked up just over $139 million in venture capital funding. That’s more than double the amount that Boston-based companies raised in June, which was $59 million.

Why the sudden uptick within Boston? , a biotech company that plans to develop immunotherapy treatments for cancer, raised $48 million in a Series B. This is almost quintuple the size of any round scored by a Boston-based company in July.

As you can see, there was a slew of large(ish) Series A rounds made by venture capitalists. , an on demand marketplace that connects businesses to people who want flexible work, raised $11 million. which uses diamond dust to help identify objects raised $10 million.

Yup, diamond dust. The company launched from stealth in 2018, and now works with tech and consumer electronic brands as well as government organizations. , the CEO said that “maintaining the integrity of the data is vital, but it is not enough. We need to extend the trust into the products.”

The list above features a healthy mix of industries, reminding us that Boston isn’t just a biotech town. In fact, as we reported last month, the city’s food tech industry is thriving too.

And as we’ll discuss in our next section on acquisitions, some Boston-based food startups are even hungry.

Toast & Weed

In July, I wrote about how restaurant management platform Toast bought StratEx, its first-ever acquisition. The buy will help Toast customers automate their payroll and HR services, like employee on-boarding and scheduling. The Boston-based company said it plans to invest over $1 billion in R&D over the next five years “to continue building software and hardware designed specifically for the restaurant industry.”

More in acquisition news, , a public cannabis company, acquired Chicago-based for $875 million. that the combined entities make Curaleaf the world’s largest cannabis company by revenue.

To Close

This is just a snapshot of what was up in Greater Boston in the past month. When I lived in the city, I noticed growing tech scene just by sifting through Eventbrite and .

I’m not going to compare Boston to San Francisco just yet because I don’t have the nuance under my belt yet. That said, as I’m starting to understand SF better I think Boston is doing what’s necessary to be taken seriously as a startup hub — it’s opening innovation labs, and then more innovation labs, helping immigrant founders, devoting Wednesdays to immigration talks, and setting up Friday nights where you can meet your

This column is meant to be a quick, digestible window into this growing enthusiasm. Talk next month, and in the meantime any Greater Boston news can be sent over to natasha@crunchbase.com.