Investor updates, using SaaS to scale your business and parental leave
A weekly newsletter that profiles women in venture and technology
Welcome to Heroa, a weekly newsletter that aims to raise the profile of women in venture. If you enjoy what you read, please do share this newsletter with friends and subscribe - Alexandra.
One of my university jobs was working in customer service at the Anya Hindmarch headquarters in Battersea. Anya is an entrepreneur and creator of the eponymous accessories company.
I learnt so much about helping customers through working at Anya Hindmarch. Anya published her new book If In Doubt Wash Your Hair, all about founding and running her own company, this week.
I sped through the book, and one of the great quotes from it is, “Ideally everyone would have an inspiring and committed mentor when setting up and scaling a business because I truly believe it is mentors, not money, that people need most when they are starting out: mentorship and inspiration, and the stories of people who have hit the same brick wall but found a way through it.”
I know there is an argument that underrepresented founders are over-mentored and under-invested in. I also think funding is an important piece of the puzzle. But I do still believe that mentorship is vital and that hopefully, some of the advice in this week’s newsletter will help you with the brick walls you are hitting.
As the last point - this week, I went to a talk where Scott Kupour, Partner at a16z and Reshma Sohoni, Founding Partner at Seedcamp, were asked what their predictions were for the next 10 years. The prediction that I found most interesting was that in 10 years from now, we'll have a quasi-public market that will be in between the public and private market—food for thought.
Round up of the news this week
🐯 Hedge fund Tiger Global is beating out Silicon Valley VCs and averaging more than one startup investment per business day this year. Softbank has put WeWork behind them and announced the biggest profit in the history of a Japanese company. The largest story in the world of technology remains the global semiconductor shortage.
🤖 Unmind, a B2B provider of a workplace mental health platform, raised $47 million. Quix, which does SaaS for real-time data streaming, raised $3.3 million.
22-year-old Paige Finn Doherty has launched Behind Genius Ventures, a new $1.6M fund (which she largely raised through her Twitter following) to back underrepresented founders.
Meet Jennifer Daniels 😄, the new head of the Emoji Subcommittee for the Unicode Consortium, who picks the emojis we get to use.
From the investors
“Some of my companies have done a great job of updating their investors in ways that are convenient to them. Sometimes that’s just what they are sharing internally with their company and a version of that with the investors. The point is to not do double the work but to stay on investors top of mind.” Shruti Gandhi of Array Ventures
Activate your Investors: Monthly Investor Updates in 5 Bullets. According to a recent study, companies that regularly communicate with their investors are twice as likely to raise follow on funding. Shruti Gandhi of Array Ventures has some suggestions (including a five bullet point template) on communicating with investors regularly … Read more here.
Using the best SaaS solutions to scale your business. Julia Morrongiello of Point Nine Capital was on a Sifted panel that agreed that less SaaS is more when you are starting out. It would help if you avoided customisation. It would help if you aimed to implement HR solutions that replace the human aspect of work … Read more here.
What happens when a VC goes on parental leave? Many VC firms don’t have parental leave policies in place. Meg Karidis of Crowdcube and Carolina Küng of Frontline Ventures, in collaboration with Diversity VC have put together a report that argues for better parental leave policies at VC firms and includes recommendations … Read more here or you can read Check Warner’s point of view on the report here.
From the operators
“No one realises how hard it is to build a business. And how hard it is to be a woman building a business. This ‘build them up to break them down is a disgusting habit, and anybody that is thinking about doing that to other women should stop.” Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO Bumble
Heightened Scrutiny of Women Business Leaders Is Wrong. Whitney Wolfe Herd says female CEOs are held to a higher standard and says that discourages women from launching ventures … Watch the interview here.
VC is performing better than ever. Then why are so few first-time funds being raised? VC fundraising set a record in 2020, bringing in nearly $80bn, but this excitement isn’t extending to first-time fundraising. Marina Temkin of PitchBook breaks down the reasons why … Read more here.
How to write a resume that converts even if you’re not “qualified”. Write a resume that converts; it helps to understand the psychology of your audience. Their #1 concern: can you do the job well? Every step in the hiring process is engineered to de-risk you. Linda Zhang offers some practical tips to write a CV that secures you your next role … Read more here.
Events
💥 Visionaries Unplugged: Why Europe? Why now? This event will include a wide range of European entrepreneurs, VCs and friends such as Doug Leone (Global Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital), Reid Hoffman (Founder of LinkedIn) and Sonali De Rycker (General Partner at Accel).
🚀 Debt vs equity: What you need to know. Venture debt is an often overlooked option and one many founders still don’t really understand. Sifted in conversation with Catherine Birkett, CFO, GoCardless, Martin Gibson, venture partner, Accel and Sonya Iovieno, Head of Venture & Growth, Silicon Valley Bank. Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 12:30 BST.
⚕️Investing and Fundraising in HealthTech and FemTech. An all-day conference about Investing and Fundraising in HealthTech and FemTech space with startups, investors and experts! Thursday, June 17, 2021, 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM BST.
Opportunities
Mosaic Ventures - Associate - 🇬🇧
Deliveroo - Corporate Strategy Manager - 🇬🇧
Entrepreneur First - Fundraising Associate - 🇬🇧
Applications for the Zinc Venture Builder are now open and will close on 25th June. Apply now!
SEE YOU NEXT MONDAY!
If you have any comments, questions, or want to chat about start-ups and venturing, then do drop me a comment.
Written by Alexandra Wyatt, based in London but (usually!) a global traveller. You can also reach me on Twitter and Instagram.