Even after the infamous breakup with Bill Gates, Melinda Gates has remained remarkably true to her philanthropist calling. She recently pumped $57 million into the Female Founders Fund. She remains the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Melinda made this contribution through her company, known as Pivotal Ventures. The money will offer seed funding for lifestyle and early-stage tech companies run by women. "I strongly believe we're missing out on valuable transformational ideas; we're doing this by not putting enough resources behind women," Melinda said. Significantly, this is Melinda Gates' second investment in the enterprise Female Founders Fund (FFF). The fund has collectively raised $95 million over three different funds. In 2016 Melinda also invested $25 million through her Pivotal Ventures company.
Other new investors in the fund include Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, Sima Sistani, co-founder and CEO of the social network Houseparty, and Anne Wojcicki, co-founder, and CEO of 23andMe. The Female Founders Fund was first instituted in 2014. The company was launched with a $6 million fund. It sought to invest in various women-founded businesses that did not have the support of traditional venture capitalists. For the past 7 years, much funding for such female founders has been realized. Despite this, women-only funding teams merely received 2.2% of the total US venture capital money in the year 2020.
As noted, since the shocking May 2021 announcement that Bill and Melinda Gates were divorcing, Ms. Melinda French Gates also decided to continue her work as an investor and philanthropist who seeks to address gender inequality. The philanthropist's latest endeavors aim at supporting a new fund that the Female Founders venture firm has fronted. The company aims to build a bright future for women operating in the tech field. Working through the Pivotal Ventures, Melinda Gates offered to be among several limited partners who sought to raise the $57 million to aid various enterprises.
The entrepreneur Annu Duggal primarily seeks to support women-led businesses that drive change for the future. Dugan first started her own e-commerce company in India. She soon realized it was pretty challenging for women to wade through the venture capital world, dominated mainly by white males. Duggal exclusively raised $20 million for her own tech startup through Accel Partners and the VC firms, Tiget Capital. She then founded the FFF to address the VC gender disparity. According to Crunchbase, in 2020, many women-led startups only received 2.3% of VC Funding. But the pandemic has worsened the situation; it disproportionately affected most women-led companies, Crunchbase says.
Ms. Duggal recently told Forbes: "In terms of establishing a fund that primarily focuses on this demographic, there's a huge white space." In the past 8 years, FFF has supported over 50 female-led companies. This includes Maven Clinic, a virtual health startup, Tala, a fintech company, and Zola.com, a bridal company. The FFF organization has also established a network incorporating more than 50,000 investors and female founders who provide various portfolio companies with crucial expertise on modern business strategies.
According to FFF sources, the $57 million Fund II that Melinda Gates recently announced takes pride of place as the largest seed fund for female enterprises. Ms. Duggal seeks to invest in economic sectors that have grown significantly during the pandemic. As noted, some of these include workplace efficiency tools and digital health startups. Ms. Duggal adds: "The other two areas that greatly excite us include better online experiences, education, and businesses that target climate issues." In a statement coming shortly after the news broke out, Ms. Gates said: "I decided to invest in the Women Founders Fund simply because we need to have women founders and funders strategically positioned right at the high table. We have to do this if we really want to build a prosperous and inclusive economy that ropes in everyone. We know we can have new, innovative ideas from practically everywhere. Certainly, we can't keep relying on the same packages used year in, year out.
Ms. Duggal adds: "Melinda has incredibly supported us. She's been incredibly supportive and vocal, trying her best to move the needle to ensure we achieve true gender equality in the tech field. We happened to be among her earliest investments at Pivotal, a company that was specifically formed to address the existing gaps in the marketplace. Melinda has been really excited about the values we're committed to building. We're are similarly excited that she has committed to supporting us in the Fund III stage."