Invest in Women NOW
The Time is Now for the EU to Equal the Stakes for European Women in VC
A comprehensive report developed by General Partners of Venture Capital Funds on the state of Venture Capital funding with a set of initiatives to ensure equal access to capital for European female-led Venture Capital funds.
Recently, the European Investment Fund has deployed a record amount of €12.9B in commitments to the European VC market, however, only a single-digit % went to female-led VCs and growth funds. Data present the European Venture Capital market lacks women at senior partner positions in funds across the EU. According to the latest funding ecosystem in the CEE report, Women-led VCs constitute only 3% of all VC funds in CEE. In addition to that, VC funds with all-men General Partner (GP) teams have 5X the firepower (AUM) to invest in companies compared to all women GPs of venture funds. For all of Europe, women manage only €5B of assets (2016-2020).
As a response to these appalling findings, 24 female General Partners from different EU countries gathered together and with the support of European Women in VC, initiative which has grown to nearly 700 senior VC women professionals, gathered together with a mission to build a strong and active community Women VC to prose solutions to the problem actively involving EU institutions.
The group’s mission is to help women-led funds build LP relationships, encourage impact investing from VCs into women-founded companies, and to grow the under-represented female VC community from the current level of around 2% in Europe.
After the first successful online meeting of the Group with Mariya Gabriel, the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, it is time to invite the ecosystem to a very first: Handover Ceremony of “a comprehensive report developed by General Partners of Venture Capital Funds on the state of Venture Capital funding with a set of initiatives to ensure equal access to capital for European female-led Venture Capital funds”, during which The Commissioner will receive the proposal from the group, which aims to:
- emphasize the importance of pushing the industry as well as investors up to invest up to 30% of the all available capital in women-led funds;
- stimulate the drive for more inclusion and diversity in portfolio companies;
- encourage female-founded VC firms to invest more in female-led companies;
- highlight the initiative of establishing a Fund of Funds investing in women-led funds.
The launch event will take place on ZOOM on 15th July from 10:10 AM CET to 11:00 AM CET.
Register now!
Running order – 15 July
10:10 – 10:20: Opening from Laura González-Estéfani, TheVentureCity and Kinga Stanislawska, Experior VC.
10:20 – 10:40: Intro from the commissioner and handover
10:40 – 10:50: Next steps & action plan
10:50 -11:00: Q&A
