The idea of venture capital firms and funds are relatively new but its underlying principles have existed for decades, namely someone sees a promising business and fronts their own money so that they can grow the business into maturity.
While this space was full of predominantly men in the past, many successful women have founded some very successful venture capital funds. Some female founded venture capital funds to highlight are:
- SoGal Ventures
- Brilliant Ventures
- Halogen Ventures
- Glasswing Ventures
SoGal Ventures
This venture capital fund has offices located around the globe in China, Singapore, and New York. Their main areas of focus are in both consumer technology and health technology. SoGal Ventures sees the future of health as far more technology-integrated than it is today. They take pride in calling themselves the first-ever all female-led millennial venture capital fund. While they are open to other markets, the majority of investment by this group is currently in Asia and North America.
Brilliant Ventures
Brilliant Ventures was founded in Los Angeles by two women with the goal of changing the way commerce is conducted. They seek to do this by leveraging valuable relationships with both industry partners to get feedback for issues that startups can solve. They also work to get feedback for other venture capitalists who can help fund these new companies. Networking has proved to be highly valuable for this incredible team.
Halogen Ventures
Founded in Los Angeles by Jesse Draper, this venture capital fund seeks to invest in early-stage technology companies of all kinds in both the seed funding and series A funding stages. Draper began her career as a technology talk show host and quickly became obsessed with early-stage cutting edge technology. Not only was this fund founded by women, but they also do everything in their power to promote and mentor female entrepreneurs hoping to break into the technology sector.
Glasswing Ventures
This venture capital fund was initially founded in Boston, Massachusetts and focuses on endeavors in the space of artificial intelligence, more specifically, for its applications in cyber securities. Thousands of cyber attacks are launched each and every day against consumers, businesses and even foreign governments. Artificial intelligence has the ability to work quickly and efficiently to eliminate these threats, and this is where Glasswing Ventures comes in. Their initial fund is said to be a total of $112 million.