Why VCs fund founders they like

Only 2% of venture capital goes to all-women teams. David Fogel from Alma Angels has a theory about why: investors decide who they like long before they open the data room. That’s why Alma Angels built a community of roughly 700 angels and family offices, 75% of them women, and they’ve backed around 250 tech and science startups with at least one female founder on the team. We marketers know the pattern way too well. Fundraising runs on the same top-of-funnel logic as your pipeline, where the buyer shortlists who they already trust and reads the spec sheet second. In this episode:

• Why your due diligence invite depends on the investor liking you first (sorry)
• How a community with 14 volunteers running due diligence backed 72 startups last year, while the average syndicate does 3 to 10 deals
• The 2017 research showing VCs, men AND women, ask male founders how they’ll succeed and female founders how they’ll avoid failing
• The period app male investors called “yuck” and “niche,” for half the world’s population
• David’s pitch advice for women founders

Banter with Billy is ENVY’s podcast for B2B marketers and the people building tech companies. Subscribe, it’s free, and Billy asks the questions you’re too polite to 😉