A Denver-based venture capital firm added a new member to its team.
Range Ventures, which invests and supports early-stage companies, hired Hayfa Aboukier last week.
Aboukier joins the team as a principal. She will help Range’s co-founders Chris Erickson and Adam Burrows identify companies to invest in and support startups in the Range portfolio by offering advice, introductions to other experts or helping founders practice their pitch decks.
“Hayfa has deep operational experience, especially on customer success in the go-to-market side of the world,” Erickson said. “And she’s built and led teams, so she can immediately plug in and help support portfolio companies.”
Prior to joining Range, Aboukier worked at Gusto and Rupa Health as their vice president of customer success. She also started her own consulting firm helping startups scale about a year ago.
Aboukier said she didn’t think working for a venture capital firm was an option.
“My parents are immigrants. I grew up on the south side of Chicago. I'm [a] first generation, Middle Eastern woman,” Aboukier said. “… I just didn’t think going into investing or going the VC route was ever a realistic path. It was something I was always interested in, but ... I didn’t see a lot of people who look like me.”
According to recent data from the National Bureau of Economic Research, 14.5% of VC-backed businesses between 1996 and 2020 were led by women. During that same time, only 16% of partners at VC firms were women.
Due to this lack of representation, women-founded startups raised just 1.9%, or roughly $4.5 billion, of the $238.3 billion in VC distributed funds last year.
Range didn’t explicitly set out to hire a woman or hire someone from an unrepresented group, Erickson said. It was necessary, however, that whoever joined the Range team could connect and support all types of founders and bring a network that extends beyond Erickson’s and Burrows’ network.
“[Aboukier] has networks, we don’t. She has ways of connecting with founders. She brings a perspective that we don’t have, and those things were incredibly important to us,” Erickson said. “We feel incredibly lucky to be found that plus all the other things in one amazing person to join our team.”
While looking for a new member to join Range, Erickson added that it was important the person had experience as an operator and had a high-growth background. He was also looking for someone who was collaborative and good at building networks and engaging with new people. Erickson said Aboukier checked all the boxes.
Before joining Range full-time, Aboukier worked with some of Range’s portfolio companies. This allowed Aboukier, Erickson and Burrows to work together in a part-time manner before officially joining the two-person, now three-person, Range team.
“The fact that Chris and Adam were both former operators, I think was a really big draw for me because of what they could do in supporting the portfolio, which very much aligned with what I personally cared about,” Aboukier said.
Aboukier said she’s excited to be on the investing side of helping early-stage tech companies grow and expand upon the opportunity to invest in female-led startups.
“There’s not a lot of women in VC,” she said. “I know Chris and Adam weren’t specifically looking to have a woman fill this spot, but I'm here and I’m a woman and I’m marching through that door and trying to have more women at the table. … Female founders want female investors. And I think there’s [an] opportunity that can come from that.”
Range has previously invested in female founders, but Aboukier believes there’s an opportunity to build on the work that’s already been done.
Range has had a busy year. In addition to hiring Aboukier, Range led a pre-seed round for generative AI startup Griptape, led a seed round for MagicSchool — which offers generative AI tools for teachers — and participated in biotech startup Cascade Biocatalysts’ seed round.
