A pair of East Coast venture firms are teaming with Portland-based venture fund Rogue Women’s Fund on an open office hours Nov. 6.
The virtual daylong event is open to any Oregon entrepreneur who is looking to get some face time with an investor.
Rethink Impact, one of the largest funds focused entirely on investing in women and nonbinary people, and Wellington Access Ventures, which invests in women and BIPOC founders, are the other two participants.
Founders can sign up for a 30-minute slot online. People have come to these meetings to pitch, or to get feedback on a business challenge or look for advice on how to frame a startup for pitching, said Jenny Abramson, founder and managing partner at Rethink Impact.
Raising money can be about relationships as much as it is about a pitch, and these kinds of meetings can be a way to start a relationship with a fund. For Abramson, she said if a company fits her investment thesis it’s a way to start a conversation. Or if a company isn’t a fit she can advise founders on getting to the right person, she said.
“Sometimes we talk to people and we track them for a while. Sometimes (these meetings) are just to be supportive and give guidance,” she said.
This is the first such office hours Rethink Impact has held in Oregon. The firm has offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
All of the meetings will be with an investment team member from one of the funds, she said.
These open office hour events started in 2017, said Abramson. Initially, the events were created in responses to headlines in 2017 of rampant harassment in Silicon Valley of female founders and investors.
“People were saying it was hard for women and other (underrepresented founders) to get in front of VCs. So we thought, let's open up the office to (open access),” she said.
So far, Rethink Impact has one Portland investment, but, Abramson sees more opportunity in the market. Oregon is a state of interest to the fund. Its current investment is in Icon Savings Plan, a fintech providing small businesses with an employee retirement benefit.
“Portland is an exciting place to be an entrepreneur,” she said, adding that she is excited to do more in this ecosystem. Rethink Impact invests in late seed-stage through series C rounds. Checks are typically between $2 million and $10 million. The fund looks for companies in health, environmental sustainability, education and economic empowerment.
Wellington Access Ventures just closed a $150 million fund for early stage investment. The fund is interested in business-to-business software, consumer and fintech.
Rogue Women’s Fund is led by Caroline Lewis, who has become an important connection in helping more women get into venture capital.
Abramson noted that it is a challenging time for founders to raise money. Her general advice is that entrepreneurs should expect fundraising to take even longer than it has in the past. As a result, she advises founders to use cash efficiently and understand cash burn rate, unit economics and other “metrics that people ignored in the previous market.”
However, she noted for women and other underrepresented founders this environment may actually be a benefit.
“Women (founders) for example are 25% more capital efficient. And people now actually value capital efficiency,” she said, adding that research increasingly shows that diverse teams perform better. “If you do have strong business, don’t see this moment in venture a necessarily all negative.”
