By all measures, Carrie Colbert’s first foray into investing through a venture capital firm was a success, and her firm, Curate Capital, is anticipating the launch of its second fund in 2023.
Colbert had been an angel investor for several years after nearly two decades in the oil and gas industry in Houston, but Curate Capital, her woman-focused VC firm, was her first attempt at leading funding rounds targeting a specific demographic: women entrepreneurs.
“We had all these women super excited about investment and Curate Capital because they understood the value proposition,” Colbert said.
Curate Capital closed its oversubscribed $15 million Fund One at the end of 2022, exceeding Colbert’s stated target of $10 million. Eighty percent of the fund’s investors are women, and two of its portfolio companies are founded in Houston: Ampersand, a professional development platform founded by Allie Danziger and Kathrin Applebaum, and IntuiTap Medical, a medical tech company founded by Jessica Traver Ingram and Nicole Moskovitz.
As Colbert and Curate progressed, she began evaluating the fund’s investment direction. Colbert previously told the Houston Business Journal that Curate was meant to be geographically and industry agnostic — supporting women investing in any solution from anywhere — but after the fund’s closing, she said the fund had found its niche.
“We realized that our expertise really lived more in the consumer products area; that's really what we'll be leaning into going forward,” Colbert said.
When it came to attracting funding for businesses she wanted to support, Colbert said she found a new and enthusiastic band of women investors. Many of them are digital influencers, which Colbert said brought a new dynamic to investing.
“About 30% of our capital came from a group of about 15 influencers,” Colbert said. “Influencers are making a tremendous income right now, but they’re at this crossroads of figuring out, 'Well, what do I do with all this wealth that I created?' They came to me and said, 'Look, we’re making a lot of money, but we don’t know what to do with it. We can invest in [Curate Capital], you do the behind-the-scenes work, and then we can use our social selling skills to help the companies grow.'”
Colbert herself is an influencer on Instagram and cited her content as her biggest source of deal flow and connections. Among the first digital personalities she connected with as an investor were Houston-based Ted and Dede Raad, better known as @DressUpButtercup on Instagram.
Although Curate Capital has accepted investment from anywhere, Colbert noted that nearly all of the first fund's investments came from untapped areas for capital.
“Over 90% came from what I've termed the Midwestern states,” Colbert said. “Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, just right up the middle of the country. That’s exciting because we’re not pulling from the same pockets as everyone else.”
Colbert could not provide specifics about Curate Capital’s second fund but said she was hoping to launch in mid-2023.
“Conventional wisdom will say you've got to raise bigger, a bigger fund the second time, and then you start going the route of (investing) institutional money,” Colbert said. “And we’ll consider that, but I'd like to kind of counter that conventional wisdom by taking a hard look at what we do well. And I think what we learned is that women really get our message; they really get the value proposition.”
Curate Capital launched in 2020 through the efforts of Colbert and her husband Mark Latham. The firm was No. 9 on the Houston Business Journal's 2021 Largest Venture Capital and Private Equity Firms List, based on its approximate assets under management, and Colbert was an HBJ Women Who Mean Business honoree in the same year.
A 2023 analysis by small business data analytics company Merchant Maverick ranked Texas the fifth-best state for women founders. The Houston arm of Austin-based DivInc, a nonprofit that aims to remove barriers to help entrepreneurs, launched its new "Women in Tech" accelerator in September with partners including SheSpace, a coworking space for women.
Pitchbook data released in October 2022 shows deal activity for female-founded companies in the U.S. followed a general decline in funding from 2021 to 2022. However, women founders’ proportion of total deal value remained flat from 2021, at 17.2%. Pitchbook reported the plateau as a positive signal that tougher fundraising conditions are not disproportionately affecting women.
“Generally speaking, these female founders are underfunded, yet they're over delivering,” Colbert said of the funding landscape. “While it's bad that women get so little funding, I like to think that creates great investment opportunity. We’re really proud of the results that our founders are having.”
