There’s a new network in town that wants to get more capital in the hands of women founders.
All Raise, which launched in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York in April 2018, announced on Wednesday that it is bringing its model to Boston. All Raise has two objectives: (1) to increase the venture capital going to companies with women-founded companies from 15 percent to 25 percent over the next 5 years and (2) to increase the percentage of women partners at VC firms from 9 to 18 percent over the next 10 years.
“We wanted to make sure that we were equally balanced on the venture and founder sides of the circle,” CEO Pam Kostka said. “We believe these are two intertwining strands. We're only going to maximize the speed with which we achieve our objectives by doing both of these side by side.”
To that end, All Raise’s launch in Boston is being piloted by a four-person steering committee—two women from the VC world and two founders. Serial entrepreneur Emily Green, General Catalyst managing director Holly Maloney, Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby and Glasswing Ventures managing director Sarah Fay are all volunteering their time to setting up All Raise in Beantown. Kostka noted that The Engine CEO and managing partner Katie Rae was also instrumental to bringing All Raise to the East Coast, as she was part of early conversations when the organization, now registered as a nonprofit, was beginning to form.
In a blog post about the launch, Kostka notes that Beantown was recently recognized as one of the best places for female founders to raise funds and has several women-led venture capital firms. Kostka herself is originally from Andover, although she is now based far away on the West Coast.
All Raise brings a data-centric approach to solving the well-documented problems of inequity in venture capital. According to Crunchbase News’ most recent analysis, in the past three quarters, the percent of money raised by women-only founded startups has not broken past 3 percent. Meanwhile, ProjectDiane2018—which Kostka says she considers is doing the most important work in analyzing data on diversity in venture capital—notes that in 2014, there were 6,791 funded startups led by at least one woman founder; of those, less than 4 percent were led by black women.
All Raise has diversity and inclusion baked into its mission, Kostka said, and its team is working to ensure it remains aligned with that. The nonprofit will release a report at the beginning of 2020 detailing its progress.
“We as an organization want to make sure that everything—from the way we hold ourselves accountable in our own hiring practices, the way that we recruit our volunteers, the way that we go to market and look at our programs—will be very intentional every step of the way,” Kostka said.
The organization’s initiatives include several difference stage-specific bootcamps, mentorship programs, a newsletter with jobs and other opportunities and more.
The team plans to bring these to Boston by next year.
“We want to increase the number of women around the table and accelerate the pace and size of fundraising that happens for women,” Kostka said.
