Female VC Lab

SAP.iO is SAP’s startup venture arm with an enterprise-focused accelerator program whose goal is to secure SAP customers’ future in a world going through rapid digital transformation by being the bridge to the most relevant startup innovation. Since inception in 2017, SAP.iO has supported 300+ startups across 25+ Industries of which 80+ have solutions available on the SAP App Store that have resulted in 150+ signed SAP Customer contracts. SAP.iO had an strong year in 2020 with more than 400 press articles mentions in The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and more. It was recognized as Winner of the Corporate Startup Accelerator Award and named among the World’s Top 25 Startup-Friendly Companies by Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce. ★ Support this podcast ★

Lenore Champagne Beirne is an Investor, Executive Coach and Venture Strategist. At Bright Ventures, Lenore and her team are investing in and coaching startup leaders, and cultivating equity and access in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Lenore invested in early-stage companies at 645 Ventures and deployed foundation capital for economic development in Haiti. ★ Support this podcast ★

Founded in 2016 and launched in January 2017, the Black Cooperative Investment Fund (BCIF) is a a 501(c)3, community-based organization rooted in self-help economics that provides microloans to the Black community through pooled dollars and raises awareness about the importance of economic empowerment, equity, and wealth building for the Black community. The organization focuses specifically on the Southern California region. BCIF seeks to create social change for the Black community through the primary strategy of building assets and wealth. We provide microloans through pooled dollars from individuals and companies who are passionate about economic empowerment for the Black community. The long-term vision is to provide a dedicated, reliable, and perpetual source of capital to create assets and build wealth for, and within, the Black community, while also serving as a catalytic force for building a critical mass movement of change based on economic imperatives. We provide affordable, low-interest, low-fee loan alternatives to traditional lenders. All earnings from interest repayments are reinvested into the fund to grow and sustain the fund for long-term usage in the Black community. Annual fundraising goal: $500,000 will allow the fund to distribute 24 – 36 microloans annually, ranging between $5,000 – $20,000. ★ Support this podcast ★

RareBreed VC is a Pre-seed to Seed Fund that is investing in exceptional founders outside of the large tech eco-systems (SF,NY,MA) earlier than everyone else. At Rarebreed we invest in companies building a software product with a unique or clearly repeatable customer acquisition strategy or building a physical product in a vertical that has lacked innovation in 10+ years. This is because these two founders are out-of-the-box thinkers and problem solvers. ★ Support this podcast ★

VegaX is the “BlackRock” of the Digital Asset Industry. We provide investors globally with one-stop access to sophisticated and secure crypto asset management. The asset management industry is the largest in the world representing more than $80 trillion dollars in investments through investment products like ETFs, mutual funds and indices that outperform investments in individual stocks. VegaX is the first to create similar investment products for Crypto providing investors outperformance versus buying individual crypto currencies. On average, investors buying VegaX products make 30% more profit versus just holding Bitcoin. ★ Support this podcast ★

EPIC and its team are the revenue-based financing platform for impact-driven companies and investors. Our mission is to accelerate positive impact and improve humanity by democratising access to investments. We leverage revenue-based financing as a financial instrument to match and align investors and founders who want to do good and do well. ★ Support this podcast ★

Irina Berkon, is a proven finance and accounting leader, a CPA with over 15 years of progressive hands-on experience in corporate finance. She brings a solid background in the fields of IPO, start-ups, M&A, financial audits, international accounting and tax structure (US, RU, EU), corporate strategic planning and development, deal structures, sales/supply channels establishment and financing activities. Irina is a member of various industry-specific groups and participates in publications, talks and panels on topics such as fintech, blockchain, compliance and leadership. She has delivered award-winning pitches in her role as CFO, written publications on various topics and has been featured in Forbes and other publications on the topic of fintech and blockchain. Irina is a Managing Director of 'Golden Seeds' one of the nation’s most active early-stage investment firms focused on women-led businesses and the CFO of MetalPay a fintech banking platform for fiat and crypto payments. ★ Support this podcast ★

Beyond Capital is an impact investment fund that invests in seed-stage, for-profit social enterprises serving impoverished communities throughout India and East Africa. - In addition to investment capital, we provide probono (“Beyond Capital”) resources to social enterprises as a crucial part of our early stage investment strategy. - Because we are structured as a non-profit, we can reinvest the returns from our investments for perpetual impact. - To-date, we have achieved a fund IRR of ~27% ★ Support this podcast ★

Her Capital is a venture fund supporting female entrepreneurs across Southeast Asia. We are on a mission to tap into overlooked female founders in the region, addressing the 3% of global venture funding that currently goes to female-led companies, and capture the potential for superior returns. We are driven to harness finance to create a more inclusive world, funding sector-diverse businesses with women at their core. ★ Support this podcast ★

Abby Lyall is Vice President at Big Idea Ventures, focusing on Series A+ stage investments in sustainable food and agriculture. Prior to this role, Abby was Program Director for BIV’s seed stage alt-protein accelerator and the second employee at Quake Capital Partners. ★ Support this podcast ★

Tracy Gray is the Founder and Managing Partner of The 22 Fund & We Are Enough, as well as Executive-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). She is also a Board Director of APPLIFE Digital Solutions (OTC:ADLS) and CSUDH Philanthropic Foundation. ★ Support this podcast ★

As a Xennial, born with an analog childhood, and digital adulthood, Leesa Soulodre is a serial entrepreneur who has invested her lifetime on the frontiers of DeepTech pioneering, digital transformation, and innovation. She has served more than 400+ multinationals and a plethora of start-ups in 19 sectors across Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Americas. In Founder and CxO leadership roles, Leesa has led companies from seed to $14B USD into new markets, pioneered deep technology, accelerated top lines prior to exits, and supported in the raising of over USD40M in Seed to Series C investments. She has had one IPO, a number of successful exits, and knows the hard knocks of lessons learned. As General Partner of R3i Ventures, Soulodre supports many of the world's most promising early-stage deep tech companies in accelerating their growth and is an active EIR and coach across the DeepTech ecosystem accelerators. ★ Support this podcast ★

Carman Chan is in the cover story of Nikkei Asia Review as Top 5 Women-to-Watch in Asian Tech. Carman has 17 years of experience as a Serial Entrepreneur, Tech Columnist, 5 years as Venture Investor, and 3 years as International Speaker across ten countries. Carman is also the author of best-selling accelerated learning books. Her first startup, EnglishStreet (ES) became a business case at the Harvard’s Business Review Database. ES was acquired by the Hong Kong Economic Times (0423.HK). Her second startup, Click Limited, has the first CFO of Tencent, Patrick Tsang and the founder of Cherubic Ventures, Matt Cheng, as investors. Click Limited merged with Hiiir Inc. and was acquired by FastEastone (4904.TW). Carman founded Click Ventures in 2015 and its first fund became the only seed fund from Asia to make the Top 5 Seed fund (Vintage 2013-2015) by performance, while its second fund became the Top 1 in the Fund to Watch category by performance in Preqin’s Top Performing Ventures Capital Funds Report in March 2018. In 2019, Click Ventures has been named Consistent Top Performing Fund Manager by Preqin! ★ Support this podcast ★

Eve is an international marketing professional and entrepreneur, experienced Business Development, Strategic Partnerships and Investor Relations professional with expertise in Tech, Entertainment (Video Games) and Blockchain. She has M.A. degree in Marketing and Ph.D. in Economics, and is a regular judge/panelist and mentor at Venture Capital classes at Los Angeles Film School and Stanford University. ★ Support this podcast ★

Delilah Panio is Vice President of U.S. Capital Formation for Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) based in Southern California. In this role, Delilah advises U.S. companies on the opportunity to list and raise capital on Canada’s premier equity markets. She is a frequent speaker and pitch competition judge and coach, and was named in the “2019 Top 100 People in Finance” Magazine. Previously, Delilah spent 10 years at TSX and TSXV in business development and strategy. She has advised many companies on the going public process and provides an understanding of private and public financing options in Canada and the U.S. Delilah is an Advisory Board Member for MAPLE Business Council, a trade organization between Canada and Southern California, and is Co-Chair of the Capital Council for WE Global, an innovation studio for women entrepreneurs. Delilah is also the Executive Director and Co-Founder of We Are Enough, a non-profit that educates women on why and how to invest in women-owned businesses and/or with a gender lens. ★ Support this podcast ★

Barbara Bickham [00:00:00]: Welcome to the Female VC Lab Podcast. My name is Barbara Bickham, and I would love for you to introduce yourself in one line. Give me your name, your title, and the name of your fund. Claire Chang [00:00:13]: Sure. Thanks for having me. My name is Claire Chang, founding partner at IgniteXL Ventures. Barbara Bickham [00:00:19]: Wonderful. Thank you, Claire. So what inspired you to become a venture capitalist or, an investor? Claire Chang [00:00:29]: I think there are 2 things that I can talk about. 1, is the fact that I am passionate in helping others. And I believe that comes from the fact that I myself have been a beneficiary of being helped by many others. I'm an immigrant, child. I came here with my family when I was 12 years old. None of my family members spoke a word of English. And so you can imagine from settling in to going to school, learning our ways through, we had to rely on helps from many, others. So that's one. Claire Chang [00:01:05]: Having been a single mom with 2 children working full time Oh. It all had That's another one. And I absolutely relying on family and friends to fill in, taking care of the kids, Right. Being filling in that father's role, and just being mentored. It takes a village to raise a child and might think working full time as a single mom, there's no way you could do this by yourself. Barbara Bickham [00:01:28]: Absolutely. Claire Chang [00:01:30]: Having experienced that, the beauty of getting help, has made me wanna help others just as in return. So that's one. And, of course, if you've and all of us have have experience helping others, and the feeling that you get, the rewarding feeling that you get when you know that you have made an impact or difference, in others, I think that is what keeps you wanting to, be that helping hand when there's a call for it. Second thing I would say is the fact that I love working with passionate startup founders. The energy and the passion that they exude is really contagious and addictive. Barbara Bickham [00:02:16]: You know what? I'm glad you said that because it is very addictive. It can be addictive. That's a good word for it. Claire Chang [00:02:22]: It is. Right? Many in the media, we see all these shining lights on these unicorn startup founders, but many of the founders, we struggle. The founders struggle. The the failure rate is very high, north of 95%. 90 90 some percent? 90. Right? It's not a it's a very tough and sometimes lonely journey. Yes. And I think I read most recently that start up founders are 2 times more likely to, suffer from depression. Claire Chang [00:02:56]: Wow. Twice more likely to suffer from suicidal thoughts. Three times more having substance abuse. And get this, 10 times more, likely to, be suffering from bipolar disorder. I was like, damn. Barbara Bickham [00:03:14]: Wow. That's so interesting. Claire Chang [00:03:16]: That's extreme. But at the same time, I think you can also see that because I when you're a founder, you have to constantly put on the space of being confident and and and at the same time, you're going through internal battle of self doubts and all these struggles that you're going through, but you can't show that upfront. I can see that, yeah, that bipolar Barbara Bickham [00:03:38]: The pressure. Now there's a constant pressure there as a founder, you know. Right. Right. There's a constant pressure and that can lead to many of those issues you discussed. So thank you for bringing that out, Claire. Claire Chang [00:03:52]: And and yet, you have these founders that are just, you know, absolutely passionate in working on the the solutions products because they believe that they're solving a problem And then we'll be better placed with this solution. I know myself having gone through a personal experience of being in a start up where I was one of the the 6 team members, 5 engineers, 1 female. We were literally sleeping, eating, working in, you know, one office. Really just excited at what we were working on. We we really truly believed that this was going to change the world. You know, that whole the HBO Silicon Valley. Right. It's very true. Claire Chang [00:04:33]: You you operate with this notion that you are doing something so important. You're so zeroed in what you're working on. It's that passion. And then, also, I think I started a global accelerator back in 2014. I was helping entrepreneurs in Korea to expand to the US markets. I worked with over 200 founders where I got to experience these amazing resilient founders. They had language barrier, cultural barrier. They weren't sleeping just because they needed to get ahead, to compete with the local founders here. Claire Chang [00:05:06]: And none of that none of those challenges stopped them from what they wanted to do. And having worked with them over and over again, understanding the the kind of challenges that they face, but they were relentless, in their pursuit of getting the products, and solu

Liz splits her time between Ethereum Classic Labs, and parent company Digital Finance Group. On a daily basis she can be found: sourcing startups, working with portfolio companies, providing updates to crypto-exchange partners, collaborating with universities, giving talks, and helping get Matrix Exchange ready to launch. Previously, she was at Plug and Play Tech Center where she led the Insurtech startup program globally. She holds an MBA and Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science. ★ Support this podcast ★

Title: ShowNotes for Female VC Lab Podcast with Vera Schroeder from Safar PartnersWelcome to another insightful episode of the Female VC Lab podcast! In this session, we had the pleasure of speaking with Vera Schroeder, an associate at Safar Partners, who shared her unique journey from chemistry academia to venture capital and her role in bringing groundbreaking technologies to market.Key Points Discussed:Vera’s Background: Discover how a Ph.D. in Chemistry led Vera to venture capitalism, driven by a desire to see academic projects come alive in the business world.Investment Thesis: Learn about Safar Partners' focus on investing in university spinouts from MIT, Harvard, and the University of Rochester across clean tech/advanced materials, life sciences/medical devices, and AI/IT robotics.Long-term Partnership Philosophy: Understand why building deep relationships is central to their strategy and how they support portfolio companies through all growth stages with investments up to $20 million.Innovation Beyond Technology: Hear Vera's insights on innovating business models and revenue strategies once technology breakthroughs are achieved.Case Study - Radical Plastics: A fascinating discussion on recent investment into bio-plastics highlighting innovation not just in product but also leveraging industry expertise for rapid scalability.Bonus Question Insights:The Future of Venture Capital: Anticipate more small specialized funds emerging as fund managers navigate raising capital amidst cautious LP spending.Connect with Vera: To reach out or follow her work within venture capital space:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vera-schroeder/We thank Vera for sharing her time and thoughts on today's show. Don't forget to tune into future episodes for more behind-the-scenes perspectives from female VCs shaping tomorrow’s innovations! ★ Support this podcast ★

ShowNotes for Female VC Lab Podcast with Dr. Silvia MahGuest: Dr. Silvia Mah, Adastra VenturesHost: Barbara BickhamIn this insightful episode of the Female VC Lab podcast, host Barbara Bickham welcomes Dr. Silvia Mah from Adastra Ventures to discuss her journey into venture capitalism and her passion for empowering female-led businesses and founders of color.Key Points Discussed:Introduction to Guest: Dr. Silvia Mah shares her background as part of Adastra Ventures.Becoming a VC: The impetus behind becoming an investor was the desire to bring access to capital within the ecosystem; she describes herself as an "accidental investor."Professional Journey: With 15 years in startup fields commercializing University Technologies at UC San Diego, coupled with a Ph.D. in biochemistry/molecular biology and an MBA, she brings a unique understanding of both science and business.Addressing Access to Capital: Discusses challenges faced by entrepreneurs regarding access to early-stage capital, especially women founders and people of color.Personal Investment Philosophy: Inspired by an unexpected inheritance from her father, decided to invest in female-led businesses and those run by people of color; industry agnostic approach.Creating Ecosystems & Community Impact: Emphasizes building ecosystems around these investments that nurture communities - when you invest in women, you're investing in their entire community due to their efficiency with money management.Investment Thesis Motivation: Shares how personal experiences shaped her investment thesis focusing on impact-driven ventures led by underrepresented groups.Reading Habits & Resources: Enjoys reading books like 'Dare To Lead' alongside articles for current insights (mentions Medium) while staying connected with local news through publications like San Diego Business Journal; also listens to podcasts including servant leadership topics along with daily bible readings reflecting spiritual practices.Evolution Of Venture Capital: Dr. Mah observes tactical shifts towards smaller check sizes due diligence risk mitigation strategies amidst economic changes while strategically noting collaboration trends among larger firms or introduction new general partners driving well-capitalized funds forward; anticipates continued evolution accommodating diverse investor profiles through different financial vehicles enabling sustained entrepreneurial impacts despite size limitations on individual investments.Connectivity: Listeners can connect with Dr. Silvia Mah via LinkedIn (Sylvia M.), visit her website at sheinvests.com which hosts information about personal investment thesis/portfolio companies or explore collaborative opportunities at stellalabs.org particularly referencing upcoming Women's Venture Summit events designed advocate support network growth amongst female founders/investors alike fostering stronger collective advancement initiatives across sectoral boundaries.Join us next time on Female VC Lab where we continue uncovering stories behind influential investors shaping future innovation landscapes one conversation at time! ★ Support this podcast ★

ShowNotes for Female VC Lab Podcast with Barbara BickhamEpisode Title: The Journey of a Venture Capitalist: Insights from Barbara BickhamIntroduction:Host: Barbara Bickham, Managing Partner and Founder of the Women's Innovation Fund Accelerator.A unique episode where Barbara shares her personal journey into venture capitalism and the ethos behind her investment thesis.Barbara’s Background & Inspiration to Become a VC:A blend of technical and business education including Computer Science from Berkeley, software engineering, and a mini MBA from the University of Chicago.Triggered by recognizing funding gaps for women and underserved communities while driving her car five years ago.Experience running an angel group called Fewer Angels in Los Angeles between 2007–2009 which grew to 450 angels under her leadership.Transitioned into private equity/merchant banking raising over $50 million across various companies including significant sums in film funds and blockchain/crypto ventures.Investment Thesis Explained:Gender-balanced C-level teams as part of promoting diversity within leadership roles.Focus on all emerging tech excluding biotech/nanotech; areas include AI, AR/VR, IoT, blockchain, quantum computing, robotics etc., targeting advanced future technologies.Providing acceleration services that include thorough due diligence processes along with creating sustainability plans for portfolio companies emphasizing ESG (Environmental Social Governance) importance.Sustainability Importance Highlighted:Discusses how large corporations are shifting towards sustainable practices through examples like Apple's green bonds initiatives reflecting on why startups should follow suit to attract modern consumers who value sustainability.Learning During Global Pandemic & Building Resilience in Ventures:Shares insights about repositioning Trail Ventures to focus on educating about emerging technology relevance for businesses and investors during challenging times.Advice on Investment During Uncertain Times:Emphasizes staying active as VCs even during crises like COVID19 highlighting opportunities that arise when others may be hesitant or ‘frozen.’Contact Information & Community Engagement Request:Encourages listeners to connect via LinkedIn at BARBARABICKHAMInvites feedback for community building around the podcast series suggesting it is not just about one perspective but many shared journeys.Closing Remarks:Expresses hope that listeners enjoyed getting insight into her journey as a VCAnticipates sharing more stories through upcoming episodesReiterates desire for listener engagement regarding content preferencesThank you so much for tuning into this special installment where we got an insider look at what drives one woman’s mission in shaping the world of venture capital! ★ Support this podcast ★

This is a quick introduction on what the Female VC Lab Podcast covers. For more information, go to our website: https://femalevclab.com or follow us on Instagram @FemaleVCLab. ★ Support this podcast ★