“Exceptional” Not “Exceptions”

Women Business Leaders Winning Against the Odds

Laura (Bordewieck) Rippy is the leader of multiple funds at Alumni Ventures and serves on the Board. While at AV, she built Green D Ventures (for the Dartmouth community) to be the firm’s largest alumni fund. In her expanded role, she now leads The Yard Ventures (for the Harvard community) and AV’s Women’s Fund, which offers a portfolio of startups founded or led by women built by an all-women investing team.

In 2024, Business Insider named Laura one of the “100 Best Seed Investors” and “40 Best Women Early-Stage Investors.” Prior to joining AV, Laura was a three-time CEO, Board Member, and executive in several tech startups in Boston, Seattle, and Dallas-Fort Worth, and worked in strategy consulting in Germany during the economic unification of West and East Germany. She has previous experience at Microsoft across enterprise software and founding startup teams over seven years. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and AB from Dartmouth College in Government.

Only 1% of US businesses earn venture capital backing. And only 2% of those companies have female-only founders. The female leaders of venture capital-backed companies are not only Exceptions — they are Exceptional.

Julia Boorstin’s seminal book, When Women Lead, provides a compelling look at female leaders. At Alumni Ventures, especially through our Women’s Fund, we are committed to supporting and celebrating these transformative leaders.

When Women Lead is packed with statistics and stories that shed light on how female leaders stand out. Julia Boorstin is the award-winning CNBC journalist who created the famed Disruptor 50 while covering technology leaders. She tapped her network of female CEOs like Gina Bartasi of Kindbody and Sallie Krawcheck Ellevest (both Alumni Ventures portfolio company CEOs) and many rising stars to form her analysis.

WEBINAR: A Conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin

Tuesday, July 23, 3:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM PT

Join us fora conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. Julia has been an on-air reporter since 2006 and created CNBC’s Disruptor 50 franchise, having interviewed and studied thousands of executives. Hear her insights from interviews with female CEOs and leaders, including trailblazers like Katrina Lake, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Whitney Wolfe Herd.

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Takeaways From When Women Lead

Personally, I was energized to see fresh patterns Boorstin identified from her research. Boorstin flips the narrative.

For instance, female leaders are often perceived as more empathetic and inclusive leaders. Boorstin’s analysis takes that trait and juxtaposes it with the challenges that startup CEOs face, to show how female leaders succeed:

• Understanding Customers. Every startup needs to find product market fit. It is the work of iterating and listening. Boorstin shows multiple examples where female CEOs used skills of empathy to create new businesses and refine products. For example, the founder of Rent the Runway envisioned an entirely new business model of renting clothes by seeing a customer problem (affordably dressing for major events) in a new way. The founder of Bumble understood the gap missing in dating apps by listening to an overlooked population (women). Empathy is a superpower in this case, by driving customer insight.
• Managing in Crisis. Most startup companies live through moments of crisis. Funding rounds dissolve, key employees depart, and technology fails. From her research, Boorstin makes a compelling case that female leaders outperform in crisis situations. Typical female leadership is inclusive vs. hierarchical and prone to listen to insights from the frontline and more junior staff. That style of leadership performed well during the Covid-19 crisis. According to Boorstin’s statistics, women-led governments managed better to control the pandemic for their populations. Inclusive leadership is a superpower, accelerating the speed of frontline insights for female CEOs and leaders.

The Funding Gap

When Women Lead does not sugarcoat the statistics. Boorstin is rightfully appalled that only 2% of venture capital goes to female-only founded startups, yet they represent 6.5% of the companies (2021 PitchBook). As she points out, women startup founders get credit for being more capital efficient, but is it partially because they garner less capital?

Join Us in Backing Women-Led and Founded Startups

Alumni Ventures’ Women’s Fund builds on our firm’s robust legacy of supporting female entrepreneurs. Open to accredited investors at low minimums, the fund will provide a diversified portfolio of ~15–20 investments in companies founded or led by women.

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Connecting to Alumni Ventures Women’s Fund: Investing in the Exceptional

Alumni Ventures Women’s Fund invests in a portfolio of venture-backed companies that are female-founded, co-founded, or led by women. It builds from a position of strength. We have already invested in 350+ companies that fit the mold of fabulous female leadership in companies with backing from highly respected VCs. In addition, PitchBook ranks AV as the most active VC in the U.S. and #3 worldwide (2022 and 2023), while Cambridge Associates rates Alumni Ventures as a top-quartile performing fund for five consecutive years.

AV’s mission is to democratize access to venture capital as an asset class. We’ve raised $1.3B from 10,000 individual accredited investors. We are also democratizing access to venture funding. By backing female founders through our Women’s Fund, we take a step towards closing the funding gap. The portfolio we build is driven by the rigorous standards of Alumni Ventures’ scorecard and diligence, with the added layer that our female founders have the grit to succeed in a traditionally male startup environment.

AV’s Women’s Fund enables successful women (and allies) to back the type of female leader that Boorstin describes in When Women Lead. Not just the Exception, but the Exceptional.

Alumni Ventures offers accredited individuals access to professional-grade venture capital, a key asset class missing from the portfolios of many sophisticated investors. Since 2014, AV has raised $1.3+ billion from 10,000+ investors and backed 1,300+ unique portfolio companies. AV is a top 20 venture firm in North America according to CB Insights, as well as the #1 most active venture firm in the U.S., and #3 most active in the world, according to PitchBook’s 2022 and 2023 rankings. AV has won awards from Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, Benzinga, and the US FinTech Awards.

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