(Emmie Wolf-Dubin for YR Media)
Austin, TX — When a team of YR Media correspondents attended South by Southwest this month, one panel YR attended was presented by four female-identifying venture capitalists who are paving a new way to play the venture capital (VC) game.
If you don’t know, venture capital is one way for small business owners to start getting their businesses off the ground — think “Shark Tank.” Business owners pitch their ideas to investors in order to show profitability. If the investors agree to provide money (or capital), the start-ups can utilize it to grow their businesses and eventually repay their sponsors.
Unfortunately, in this sector, there are massive disparities in terms of both the check-writers and check-receivers. In 2022, according to the World Economic Forum, only 15% of these check writers were women.
Companies founded solely by women received an astoundingly low 2% of all capital. An appalling 0.36% of capital went to Black women. For reference, total VC activity in 2022 well-surpassed the $200 billion mark.
These massive gaps are being confronted by several incredible organizations, but one called All Raise — whose CEO, Paige Hendrix Buckner, was the moderator of the aforementioned panel — stood out.
All Raise says it’s, “Here to amplify female and non-binary voices, accelerate their success, and create a tech culture where women and nonbinary voices are leading, shaping, and funding the future.”
It’s doing this through granting money to the women and gender-expansive voices creating start-ups, along with training minority leaders on how to do things like creating convincing pitches and pave their ways in a world determined to monetarily discriminate against them.
Paige Hendrix Buckner’s moderation of the panel was fascinating.
There were three other VC women presenting: Monique Woodard (Founder of Cake Ventures), Rachel ten Brink (General Partner at Red Bike Capitol), and Karen Sheffield (Founder of Pachamama Ventures).
Hendrix Buckner began the panel by asking these three women “what qualified them to be there.” Although the question was unexpected, each presenter had answers that proved their qualifications. They went through their impressive career paths, and the only possible conclusion after hearing everything they’d worked on was that they more than deserved their positions — in the industry and on the stage.
This was reminiscent of a scene in the 2023 “Barbie” movie, wherein recipients of the Barbie Nobel Prizes said, “I worked hard for this, and I deserve it.”
This movie is, though fictional, well-represented by the women on the panel. In order to begin changing the narrative and taking a rightful share of their respective industries, women across all backgrounds must take this line of thinking into account. They worked hard, and they deserve — and they’ll show you why.
Women and POCs globally and in the United States have shown they’re not backing down from what they want, and this panel was perfectly representative of that.
It’s time to take what you need, because this is a generation of revolutionaries. If you’d like to learn how to dominate Venture Capital, click here and here. If you have an idea for a small business and are looking for resources to build it out, click here and here.
The time is now. Let’s work together, and make a change.
Emmie Wolf-Dubin (she/her) is a high school student in Nashville who covers anything from entertainment to politics. Follow her on Instagram: @redheadwd07.
Edited by NaTyshca Pickett