The Connector
Caroline Lewis
Title: Managing partner, Rogue Women’s Fund; Partner, Rogue Venture Partners, Kauffman Fellow
What it does: Both funds invest in early stage startups. The Rogue Women’s fund is focused on backing women founders.
Role: identify investment opportunities
Previous: Senior director in strategy and operations for global design, product and merchandising at Nike; management consultant for Propeller
Investment focus: Tech investments in undercapitalized markets; Women-led early stage companies
Portfolio: Source, Edify, All Voices
For more stories on this new generation of investing see the main story here.
Caroline Lewis’ “ah-ha” moment came in West Virginia when she realized the power of entrepreneurship and startups.
She was working for a woman who had three companies and was starting a fourth and asked Lewis to jump in and help. The ventures were based on consulting, behavioral psychology and change management. She said, “yes,” then everything changed.
“I got to see with her businesses, she employed so many people,” recalled Lewis. “If you can build companies, if you can build something that then can employ people, you can really fundamentally change a community by giving people that feeling of self agency and contribution through the work that they do.”
That idea became her North Star.
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Lewis eventually moved to Portland, earned an MBA from Portland State University, started and shut down a startup, went into consulting, but never lost that hunger to start something and help it grow.
She joined Rogue Venture Partners in 2017 and works with founders to build companies and with women to help get them into investing.
The venture capital model isn’t for every startup, but for some, Lewis said, it can be the catalyst to scale and perhaps go public.
“When I think about systematic, fundamental change, venture capital represents (that),” she said. “If there aren’t people who look like me or look like Marceau (Michel of Black Founders Matter) who are part of the investment decision of when companies begin, then how do they ever grow up to be the public companies that all of us have in our retirement portfolios and our public investments in?”
Venture, she argues, has a big influence on company beginnings and therefore what representation ends up being when that company becomes large.
“Look at companies like Facebook and everything that is going on, the decisions and policies they make,” she said. “So if I can be one tiny drop in this ocean and back one CEO who can go on to grow that company to be 50, 1,000, 10,000 employees and they have a different mindset than what we are seeing …. that to me is why I wake up in the morning.”
Rogue Women’s Fund is in the second year of a $5 million fund. It expects to finish out the fund with 12 investments. It looks at seed rounds in similar areas as Rogue’s main fund — tech, health care and e-commerce. Lewis can also lead rounds if needed. Not only does the women's fund invest in companies with female founders, half of the fund's investors are women.
