Beyond the ‘wealthy white guys’: Push for more women to invest in startups

“People who are investing in early-stage startups are often wealthy white guys and it just hasn’t been accessible to 95 per cent of the population,” she said.

Ms Vullinghs said more needed to be done to ensure investors writing cheques could empathise with all kinds of different problems from the inability to find affordable fresh food to how to restructure childcare so it supports working families.

“It will broaden the kind of companies we get access to and see,” Ms Vullinghs said. “I think the other side of it is that it is a wealth creation opportunity for people. If they pick a great company they get to benefit financially if that company goes on to be successful.”

The lack of women investors was highlighted in a report published last week by the Australian Investment Council which reviewed 160 firms across institutional investors, private equity firms and venture capital and found 33 per cent had zero women on their investment team.

“In today’s globalised, fast-paced and competitive marketplace, it is clear that high performing diverse teams operating in an inclusive environment will outperform and outlive those teams that are not,” the report said.

Melissa Widner, partner at NAB Ventures, is one of a handful of women partners in the venture capital sector and said more women were needed in key investment roles.

“What I’ve seen is funds recently promote their chief financial officers and head of communities to partners, and they’re really important positions in the fund, I don’t mean to say they’re not, but those have always been held by women,” she said. “The problem is that people making investment decisions aren’t women.”

Ms Widner said superannuation funds needed to lead the way as one of the main providers of investment capital.

“Superannuation funds are now investing in venture in Australia, and if they were to say, ‘this is one of the metrics we’ll look at’, then things would change,” she said.

“When we raise money, what we claim to be one of our superpowers is that we can find talent where other people can’t. So if you have a team of venture capitalists saying, ‘We can’t even find a woman, but don’t worry, we can go find really good talent and spot it where other people can’t’, then there’s a little bit of a disconnect there.”

Ms Widner said more women investing in startups would mean more diversity in the businesses funded.

“More women would get funding, because people do tend to invest in people who are like themselves,” she said.

Programs such as Scale Investors have lead the way for women investors with the network of angel investors focused on women lead startups investing more than $2 million over the past year.

Scale’s chief executive Ariane Barker said gender diversity was the first step to full diversity. “We need to see more women on cap tables,” she said. “We’ve heard it from founders, especially women founders, who want to see more women investing. Diversity full stop adds a huge amount of richness and breadth to any investment opportunity.”