Beyond The Billion is an initiative that aims to catalyze capital for innovative, venture-backable women-founded companies. It was launched to address the gender venture investment gap and has evolved from The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, which successfully mobilized a consortium of venture funds to pledge $1 billion towards women founders. Beyond The Billion focuses on driving continued investment by connecting limited partners (LPs) with general partners (GPs) who invest in diverse women-founded companies, ensuring sustained capital deployment.

Beyond The Billion (The Billion Dollar Fund For Women)

Beyond The Billion is the world's first and largest consortium of venture funds pledged to invest over $1bn into women-founded companies.
Beyond the Billion’s (BTB) first pledge campaign was launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women in October 2018 with an audacious goal of catalyzing $1 billion into the hands of women founders globally, addressing the gender venture investment gap where women were receiving only 2.2% of all venture capital funding. In under 2 years, $638 million of the first billion pledged was deployed into close to 800 women-founded companies, of which 11 have been recognized as unicorns. To continue to build on this momentum, the founders, Shelly Porges and Sarah Chen-Spellings launched Beyond The Billion, to catalyze capital deployed to and with these venture funds, ensuring their continued capacity to invest by bridging LPs and GPs, building a community of institutional investors, sovereign funds, IFIs, DFIs, family offices, wealth managers and high net worth individuals; driving the agenda collectively.

Beyond The Billion® (launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women®)

NOW LIVE: our PitchBook Data-BTB Annual Report on Women in VC Ecosystem Highlights Resilience and Strong Performance of Female Founders Amid Market Headwinds


 - Female-founded companies represent 25.5% of total VC deal count in the US year-to-date, down slightly from 26.4% percent in 2021, 

- while their proportion of total deal value remains flat at 17.2 percent. While a plateau is not cause for celebration, it is a positive signal that market headwinds are not disproportionately affecting female founders like the pandemic did in 2020, when their proportion of total deal value dropped to 14.5 percent. 

- Year-to-date, $32.4 billion has been invested in female-founded companies, meaning 2022 is already the second-highest year in terms of deal value after 2021’s outsized year!

- Investment to all-female-founded companies reached $3.6 billion year-to-date, matching the total deal value raised by companies with at least one female founder back in 2011, but still falling far short of the staggering $154.9 billion for all-male-founded companies this year.

Find out more & download the report for your weekend read!
https://lnkd.in/eHEPUSsk

Special thanks to our partners Payal Dalal Mastercard, Elise Liberto Brown Advisory, Elodie Dupuy Full In Partners, Lorine Pendleton Portfolia and Anna Snider Bank of America for the input! 

#femalefounders #investment #venturecapital 

Shelly Porges Sarah Chen-Spellings

Wrapping up Women's History Month this year by welcoming our new fund partner Ajim Capital to the Beyond The Billion consortium! 

Led by Eunice Ajim we are excited for how her investments will continue to capitalize on the market opportunity Sub-Saharan Africa presents. 

Learn more about Ajim Capital: https://lnkd.in/gddnkzUD

#investments #africa #venturecapital

The best way to support women?
Write that check. 
Invest in them. 

Our global consortium of funds celebrate International Women's Day everyday— by doing the hard work. 

Follow us and join our journey Beyond The Billion!

#femalefounders #diversitydrivereturns #femalefunders

Coming together around #womenledinnovation is always a good idea! 

Great to have fellow investors at our exclusive Billion Dollar Brunch co-hosted by our co-founder Shelly Porges  in California on the sidelines of the recent #WomeninVC Summit at Half-Moon Bay; 

with a special presentation by Victoria Raiser and Rex Martin Sankari Studios makers of the extraordinary eco game, #Katoa. 


Special mentions: Kathryn Finney Lu Zhang Fusion Fund Lisha Bell PayPal Ventures 
Catherine C. Palm Drive Capital Anitha Vadavatha Nilima Achwal Georgia Lu Sara Araghi Lucie Newcomb 

#venturecapital #funding #limitedpartners #investors #BillionDollarSeries #BillionDollarBrunch

Could not agree more Loretta McCarthy! 
Let's not fall for click-bait titles that are not helpful to the work that's been in progress for years.

The real call-to-action is this: We need more enlightened investors who recognize the remarkable innovations of women entrepreneurs.

And that's $76 million done 🙌 

Buoyant co-founders Amy Francetic and Allison Myers kicked off their efforts in January 2020, weeks before the pandemic rocked the economy. The setback was especially hard on women and people of color, who still make up only a small fraction of the $130 billion venture capital industry, Francetic said.

“Diversity begets diversity,” Francetic said in a phone interview. “When you are a woman or diverse fund manager you tend to find more diverse CEOs to fund.”

https://lnkd.in/gX8beg7i


#founders #economy #venturecapital #climate #femalefunders

Congratulations to our Global Advisory Council Member, Cheryl Alston on being named as one of the Dallas 500 for 2023 by DCEO magazine

Dallas 500 is the culmination of six months of research and curation by the editors of DCEO. “Making the Dallas 500 is no easy feat in a market as large and vibrant as North Texas,” said DCEO Editor Christine Perez. “Those featured in our 2023 edition are the best of the best; they play an integral role in driving the local economy.” 

We'll leave you with some wisdom that Cheryl once shared:

“I was always an advocate for the forgotten, and I would encourage the company to find these people. In one conversation I had, someone said, ‘We did that 20 years ago, and it didn’t work.’ My response was, ‘How many times have you hired or terminated a majority white firm in that same timeframe?’ There were probably at least 10 or 12.

“It’s amazing to me that if a diverse candidate doesn’t work once, they’re labeled in with all the other diverse candidates. For some reason, it’s the reverse label for white firms. The company recognized that and changed their behavior."


#Dallas500 #DCEO #DMagazine

Our firm was built by Shelly Porges and Sarah Chen-Spellings to address this egregious and persistent gender venture funding gap in 2018. 

In the first two years, our partner funds invested $638m into almost 800 women-founded and co-founded companies globally. And the work continues!

If you’re a female founder seeking venture capital, use the filter to check out the Partner Funds page on our website to find funds that match your sector, stage and geography. 

We know that "When you invest in women, you're in good company"™

"Women are expected to display “certain feminine behaviors, such as warmth, emotional expressiveness and sensitivity,” investment bank UBS said in a research report in 2021. But demonstrating “stereotypical feminine behavior during a pitch affects the outcome as it negatively impacts the entrepreneurs’ perceived business competence, preparedness and leadership.”

Oh, the double-bind! We Beyond The Billion® (launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women®) were proud to have supported Nikkei Asia on their important piece on #womenandwealth. 

https://lnkd.in/db8WQqZg

Feat: Shelly Porges Sarah Chen-Spellings Gobi Partners Thomas G. Tsao Vanessa Hendriadi JJ Erpaiboon Soo Wei Shaw 

Pictured below: Bank of America Anna Snider | Brown Advisory Elise Liberto | Mastercard Payal Dalal | Eunice Ajim Ajim Capital Elodie Dupuy Tina Philip Full In Partners

#business #investment #entrepreneurs #venturecapital #femalefounders

"Access to capital has been one of our greatest challenges today. Capital is the fuel that powers high-growth startups, but less than 1% of this venture funding goes to women of color. 

During our fundraising process, we are met with harsh lines of questioning that assume our business will fail or even dismiss our success. In one particular case, we were told that our traction growing from zero to over $1M ARR in a year was lucky. Obviously, it takes a lot more than luck!"

We could not agree more Symba! Women are so often told they're "lucky" and belittled in so many ways, including being told their startups are "cute" or "good projects". And yet, women continue to outperform and deliver. 

Symba is an all-in-one platform, invested into by our partner fund 1517 Fund Danielle Strachman that helps organizations streamline the management of their talent development programs, including internships and apprenticeships. The female-founded tech startup has designed over 5000 talent development experiences to-date for customers like Robinhood, Genentech, and Chewy, and was featured in the Washington Post and TechCrunch as a leader in the future of work. We can't wait to see how they will continue to shine!

#femalefounders #femalefunders #venturecapital #startups

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Beyond The Billion (The Billion Dollar Fund For Women)

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