Arc Angels - Investing in Female Led Businesses

Arc Angels

My absolute favourite thing last week was attending my first meeting of Arc Angels . Started by superstar/seasoned investor/entrepreneur Bridget Coates , Arc Angels aims to boost the pool of female investors and help female led entrepreneurial businesses get off the ground. What a privilege it was to sit and listen to two companies speak with such passion and evidence with regard to their business pitches. I find the world of investment, venture capital, seed funding and investment rounds just FASCINATING. It’s a little bit like the dark arts, and you probably don’t think too much about it until you are looking to invest or looking for investment  - or if you’ve got stuck into watching programmes like the Dragon’s Den! So, how did I find myself in this room with 45 or so passionate investors? At BVT we are looking at our options for growth and have been investigating opportunities to invest in innovative technology.  Which led me to going around New Zealand to understand how to tap into funding networks. It wasn’t long before I was completely over the same old names that kept coming up and typical way to access funding...let’s just say male, pale and stale - all you need to do apparently is sink a bottle of red and carve up a steak on the bloke’s boat on the Viaduct!  God help you if you had a woman at the helm! I needed an alternative investment network, and following a tip from Jen Corbett (EY) I came across Arc Angels and an invite to attend a meeting as an observer. It was so refreshing to find myself in the presence of an engaged investment network of people who, needless to say, were mostly women. Arc Angels invests in organisations founded, co-founded or primarily led by women because they recognise the institutional barriers women have to seeking and accessing funding to grow their businesses. This is of course why female businesses tap out at a certain level. They get to a point but then need capital investment to get to the next level. Often they are in partnership with a husband or with another woman and have family and friends who are backers and reach a stage where they don't want to put others at risk.  Female founded ventures find it difficult to raise investment compared to male founded ventures (Fortune 2018), and in NZ only approximately 18% of angel investment went to female founded ventures in 2018 (AANZ Survey 2018).  Globally only 2% of venture capital funding goes to female founder ventures.   I love the fact Arc Angels have their own fund, plus access to their brother fund Ice Angels, the most active angel network in NZ (and apparently in the Southern Hemisphere!) and that the entry point for investors is not too high.  They’re not just supporting female led businesses but also fostering an investment community of women who don’t have a spare $100k or so lying around, but who want to start investing.  I was so energised by this meeting and found it incredibly interesting. What a contrast to the red wine, meet me on my yacht, where did you go to school crowd!  I can’t wait to go back for my next meeting, now where is that membership form.