Emmeline Ventures Launches to Back Women-Founded Startups

Its inaugural fund of up to $8 million will help fuel the innovations of 20 startups anywhere in the world.
Written by Ashley Bowden
April 11, 2022Updated: April 11, 2022
emmeline ventures
Emmeline Ventures founding team. | Photo: Emmeline Ventures

When it comes to trying bold new things, nothing’s more reassuring than knowing someone has your back, especially when they’re just like you. Bringing this mentality into the venture capital space, Emmeline Ventures — a firm created by women with a diverse array of cultural backgrounds — launched out of stealth with its first investment of many in women-founded startups. 

Emmeline was co-founded by La Keisha Landrum Pierre, Naseem Sayani and Azin Radsan van Alebeek, three women with decades of combined experience across areas including market development, media and executive-level advisory. They met in 2020 in the same Pipeline Angels cohort, a program that aims to create capital for underrepresented founders. Afterward, the team made 13 angel investments in startups working to help women manage their health, build their wealth and live in a safer, cleaner world, according to Sayani. This is the same goal their new firm Emmeline strives to achieve.

“Our goal is to have an active role in changing the venture investing landscape … by funding companies that have a meaningful, positive impact on how women lead their lives in the future,” Sayani told Built In via email. “We’re aiming to not only change the landscape of venture capital but also to change the type of companies that get funded.”

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The firm is looking to shift the paradigm of women-founded companies receiving less venture capital investments than their male counterparts despite their businesses’ high market performance rates. Between 2009 and 2018, 69.2 percent of the top quartile funds in the U.S. had women in decision-making roles, according to findings by PitchBook and All Raise. During that same period, only 30.8 percent of those top funds were controlled by men. Additionally, women-founded companies in 2020 saw faster exits compared to others in the broader market, PitchBook found, indicating a higher rate of returns.

Emmeline is working to fund a future that changes norms that have been historically biased toward men. 

In regards to the knowledge and equity gap concerning solutions targeted toward women in the U.S., Sayani mentioned an FDA regulation that excluded women from clinical trials for almost two decades. As a result, all the medical data, insights and drug development during that period were based entirely on male physiology, and that disparity is finally starting to be resolved in today’s era.

“It’s an outsized category of human and business opportunity that was simply excluded before. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” Sayani said.

Emmeline’s first investment went to Clutch Wallet, an LA-based startup offering a digital wallet solution that enables women to actively participate in the growing asset class of crypto and Web3. 

While the firm is in the midst of raising its first fund, its goal is to raise $5 million to $8 million. These funds will go toward 20 women-founded businesses anywhere in the world that are developing tech solutions geared toward helping women. Emmeline’s first checks will range from $50,000 to $100,000 for pre-seed and seed rounds. With these smaller round sizes, the firm is also inviting investors to engage by way of education and participation in deal flow activities. Investors can also engage with other limited partners.

“We are a fund attracting founders who align with and are passionate about rewriting the code that drives our societal and business norms,” Sayani said. “We invest in businesses that are changing the baseline for how we all live. This starts with how we empower tomorrow’s women and when we rewrite that code, everyone does better.”

Jobs at Emmeline Ventures

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