After 30 years supporting the Greater Boston startup community, The Capital Network is about to begin a national expansion under its new leader.
The Capital Network is a nonprofit organization that supports female and other first-time founders of early-stage startups. It focuses on the funding process, with education, programming and mentorship opportunities intended to make raising capital more inclusive and accessible.
Kat Lawlor joined The Capital Network as its new executive director and president at the beginning of 2023. She has big expansion plans for the nonprofit, including serving entrepreneurs across the U.S. and other underrepresented founders beyond those that identify as women. Lawlor replaces Marie Meslin, who joined The Capital Network as a program director in 2015 and stepped down as executive director and president at the end of 2022.
The organization’s new leader has already seen two sides of the entrepreneurial journey. She’s a founder who launched her own e-commerce apparel company after going through Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) programming. She loved the organization and working with fellow entrepreneurs so much, she decided to join EforAll in Lynn as a program manager. She was then promoted to executive director. Lawlor recently sat down with BostInno to discuss her vision for The Capital Network, the first steps in their national expansion plan and her dedication to underrepresented entrepreneurs. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What drew you to this new role at The Capital Network?
The TCN board wants to take TCN national. I’m a builder. I’m a fundraiser. And being at EforAll when they expanded nationally, it made it very exciting for me that this was an opportunity for us at TCN.
How would you describe your vision for The Capital Network?
My vision is to expand the organization to help all diverse founders nationwide through our expert fundraising, education, access to the community of mentors and investors and be a part of a network of diverse entrepreneurs that face the same barriers when it comes to raising capital.
What does a national expansion look like? Where do you start?
The first step is, we’re opening up our female fellowship program, which is our flagship program — which has only been offered in New England — nationwide this year for the first time. We’ll still have a 16-person cohort, but we’re hoping to have it be diverse females from all over the country. The outcomes that we’re hoping for by doing that is to build up our team and partner with more organizations and companies and entrepreneurs that share the same values and vision of bridging the funding gap for female founders. If we open it up nationally, it’ll help us be recognized nationally and more people will hopefully want to join us. (Editor's note: Applications to this program open in March.)
What else is a priority for you as you kick off your first few weeks at the nonprofit?
We are a three-person team. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god. You guys do all this as a three-person team?’ We lack the funding to build our team. So what I’m really doing right now is putting a focus on fundraising to build our team.
Being a founder yourself, how does that influence your leadership style and role at The Capital Network?
I’ve gone through the hardships that female entrepreneurs face. Entrepreneurship is a lonely road. So, I feel like I can speak to it from a personal experience, which I think leverages not just my expertise in programming and everything like that, but also from a fundraising perspective.
EforAll supports underrepresented founders broadly, rather than solely female founders. How do you plan to carry that mission over to The Capital Network’s work?
Females face this huge barrier with raising venture capital. But when you do research on it too, for BIPOC founders, it’s significantly lower. So, as we grow, I would love to add more programming. The female fellowship is for everyone who identifies as female. But everyone else is allowed to participate in our workshops and bootcamps and member portal. But we don’t have a program, like the fellowship program, specifically for other diverse founders. So that’s something down the line that we would love to add as we expand.
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