 Who is Julianne Zimmerman?
For more than 25 years Julianne, who is Managing Director, has been putting technology to work for the greater good in the US and abroad. Along the way she has contributed in a variety of roles: Co-Founder of a seed-stage investment firm; VP of Communications at a utility-scale energy storage company; Co-founder and Director of Business Development of a biofuel company; VP of Engineering at a water purification company; and trusted mentor, board member, advisor, or consultant to many more. Julianne invests heavily in cultivating community, including as a mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and life deacon in her church; she recently concluded a three-year term as Co-chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum Innovation Series. As an author and speaker for domestic and global audiences, she has contributed to GreenMoney, GreenBiz, Sloan EMBA, GIST Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, All-Russia Innovation Convention, and the MIT Nuts & Bolts Course, among others; she also frequently serves as a judge for technology and entrepreneurship competitions, and as a connectrix for innovators around the world. Julianne earned two undergraduate degrees from MIT (Aero/Astro Engineering and Literature / Humanities), an MS from the University of Maryland, and an executive certificate in sustainability management from the Presidio Graduate School; she previously volunteered as a certified Emergency Medical Technician in Maryland (PGFD 1) and Massachusetts (Boston Marathon finish line medical services); she served as a research diver at the University of Maryland Space Systems Laboratory. She was twice a finalist in the NASA astronaut selection process. Her motto: Putting technology and capital to work for the greater good. Learn more about her here.
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 Who’s Reshma Shetty? Reshma Shetty is a co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism company designing organisms to spec for customers across markets including nutrition, health and consumer goods. The company’s organism engineers work directly with customers including Fortune 500 companies and government entities like DARPA to design microbes for their needs. Reshma has been active in synthetic biology for over 10 years and co-organized the first international conference in the field: Synthetic Biology 1.0. In 2008, Forbes magazine named Shetty one of Eight People Inventing the Future and in 2011, Fast Company named her one of 100 Most Creative People in Business. In 2019, Reshma became the 6th woman to recieve the Rosalind Franklin Award. Reshma holds a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT. Learn more about her here.  What’s her Funding Tip:
I think this is one of the best pieces of funding advice around, especially in an era when a lot of empty shell companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars without a real revenue model (see article about our InvestHer Podcast episode on the WeWork debacle). Fundraising has been elevated to a kind of global startup sport, where the ‘prize’ of raising vast amounts of money (sometimes even on the basis of a powerpoint presentation and a connection to the investors) is seen as the badge of honour of any respectable entrepreneur. Where chasing headlines of the biggest fundraise in history … (fill in the blanks) mean more than the actual work being done in the background to build and grow a company that is solving . The latter is exactly what Reshma has done, and on the side, she just happened to have raised a LOT of money to actually grow her company, take it public, get the funds she needs to fuel further research and new products to change the world, help create a Fund and work tiredlessly to help find a cure to coronavirus — among other things! Reshma Shetty is a focused, perseverant scientist, with true passion to change the world for the better. When you read her bio, you cannot but be impressed by everything she has already achieved, and eager to see how far she will go to change the world — as she and her daring colleagues will. I remember interviewing her for my Huffington Post series about Trailblazing Women a few years ago, and being impressed by her vision, clarity of thought and determination to build the future she wants to see. No wonder Forbes named her one of 8 People Inventing the Future. Reshma co-founded Ginkgo Bioworks in 2008 with fellow MIT grads Austin Che, Barry Canton, and Jason Kelly, and their graduate adviser, Professor Tom Knight. They started with a simple but revolutionary goal: help people design and build organisms. About Ginkgo Bioworks:“Ginkgo Bioworks is the organism company. We design custom organisms for customers across multiple markets. We build our foundries to scale the process of organism engineering using software and hardware automation. Organism engineers at Ginkgo learn from nature to develop new organisms that replace technology with biology.” They are now harnessing the power of biology to help in the fight against Covid-19 (see below) and are uniquely positioned to help move research for a cure faster. Why Should You Listen to Her Funding Tip? She’s got the Funding T-Shirt — and then some!Ginkgo Bioworks has raised $719 million since it was founded in 2008. In September 2019, they raised a cool $290 million Series E Reshma was key to the IPO to take the company public in 2017 and today it is worth $4.2 Billion — becoming a Unicorn in the Biotech world! This is exactly what she said she’d do in my Trailblazing Women interview with her for the Huffpost a few years ago! When I interviewed her about her funding journey for Ginkgo Bioworks, she spoke about how difficult it was to be the first biotech company from Y Combinator and that it was not so easy back then, to find investors to invest in such innovative technology. What surprised her, was that more traditional tech investors were very interested. How things have changed now — and she is a key part of that change. Funding the Future- Creating a $350 Million Fund for Biotech SpinoutsGinkgo Bioworks has come full circle now, thanks to their unwavering focus and the will to support future biotech companies, in October 2019, they raised their own $350 Million Fund for Biotech Spinouts. It doesn’t get more impressive than that! When I asked her what she would say to her younger self, she replied: “I would tell myself to not worry so much about making mistakes. It’s very easy to fall into a trap where you worry too much about making a wrong move and then suffer from analysis paralysis. In reality, it’s usually better to just make a decision and move on.” Sound advice, particularly in the times we are living in now. >> READ OUR TRAILBLAZING WOMEN INTERVIEW WITH RESHMA >>> Ginkgo Bioworks’ Reshma Shetty On Co-Founding Synthetic Biology’s First Unicorn >>Three Industry-Changing Founders on Building Your Own Empire Ginkgo Bioworks has now re-directed their Biotech platform to Coronavirus. You can’t have more skin in the game than that! Part of that commitment is that they are giving $25 Million worth of free access to their infrastructure. JOINING THE FIGHT AGAINST A PANDEMIC“Accelerating diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines There’s nothing more critical right now than scaling diagnostics and developing new therapeutics and vaccines. We’ve committed our platform to supporting research and development efforts for COVID-19, including $25M of free access to our infrastructure.”
“ Work on something important. Life’s too short not to work on something important”. Her advice has even more resonance today. Thank you Reshma and Ginkgo Bioworks for all you are doing to change the world. Learn more about Reshma Shetty, here:
Want more Funding Tips? SIGN UP BELOW! Sign up for more tips at https://bit.ly/100DaysFundingSignUp Sign up here : https://bit.ly/100DaysFundingSignUp .. to get a daily Funding Tip to your email box or Visit the homepage of 100 Days of Funding Tips to get more funding tips. Please feel free to share them widely with other entrepreneurs and investors alike! Check out Global Invest Her website, to learn more about How to Get Ready for Funding Anne About the Author: Anne Ravanona is Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, a recognised international Gender Diversity Advocate and Consultant, and TEDx Speaker. She’s passionate about getting 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030. Learn more about Anne here:
Following   Who’s Adam Quinton?Adam Quinton in an Adjunct Professor and member of the Management and Gender & Public Policy Faculties at Columbia University, as well as Faculty advisor to the SIPA Women in Leadership student group. He is currently a finals judge for the Cartier Women’s Initative Awards and has been mentor for the 92Y “Women in Power”Program since its inception in 2016.
Although currently not actively investing, as the Founder/CEO of Lucas Point Ventures, Adam Quinton has invested in and advised 15 early stage companies with a focus on diverse management teams. His investments include The Muse, Glassbreakers, Venuebook, Pinks and Greens, Snaps, Rapt Media, Hire an Esquire and Validately. Adam is on the Board of Pinks and Greens and serve as an Advisor to a number of companies as well as Chicago based techweek. He was previously a Managing Director of Bank of America Merill Lynch. In 2014 he was named by AlleyWatch one of “25 Angel Investors in New York You Need to Know” and also one the “100 NYC Tech Influencers You Need to Know”. In 2015 Adam was featured in Tech.co as “One of 8 VCs Making Waves” and in 2016 was named as one of “26 great people spearheading change in tech investment” by Silicon Republic. I have the pleasure of knowing Adam for many years, seeing him most recently when he was a speaker on the investor panel at Inspirefest in Dublin. He truly believes in investing in diversity and puts his money where his mouth is, when it comes to funding diverse founders: “I want to make money, so I choose to invest in women entrepreneurs!” Don’t you just love that quote! Adam saw early on, that investing in women entrepreneurs is an arbitrage opportunity. Learn more about him here. What’s his Funding Tip: If I had a dollar or euro for every time I’ve heard a female founder tell me how difficult it is to ‘read’ investors, and that they felt they had been kept hanging on for an investment, instead of getting a clear NO, I’d be a millionaire by now! It can be very hard for first time founders to understand when an investor is saying no. Investors often say things like ‘you’re too early’, ‘come back to me when you’ve shown X or Y in traction’ and then when you do, they can move the goalposts again and ask for some other metric. That’s why Adam’s advice is timely — if it’s not clear from the investor side, just simply ask them directly if they plan on investing now. If they say no, at least you can move on, to the next warm lead on your investor list. Why Should You Listen to His Funding Tip? Adam is not only an Adjunct Professor at Columbia, on the board of several startups, he’s a judge at the prestigious Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, where he gets to keep a pulse on other great women founded startups on the rise. He has a lot of experience in this funding game and is generous in sharing it. I appreciate his frank, no nonsense approach when he does so. “Raising money is hard for everyone — Since you can’t change the system, do your best to get through the system. That means presenting in a compelling way, knowing your business inside out and your numbers cold.” Adam Quinton is clearly an advocate for more diversity in funding. Whether through speaking at conferences with tips for female founders, or also to advocate for more women in venture capital, like it this video captured at Inspirefest in 2016, he is on the front line, spreading the good word about why we need to change the world of funding. Thank you Adam, for all you do! We need more male champions of change, just like you! Learn more about Adam Quinton, here:
Want more Funding Tips? Sign up here : .. to get a daily Funding Tip to your email box or Visit the homepage of 100 Days of Funding Tips to get more funding tips. Please feel free to share them widely with other entrepreneurs and investors alike! Check out Global Invest Her website, to learn more about How to Get Ready for Funding Anne About the Author: Anne Ravanona is Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, a recognised international Gender Diversity Advocate and Consultant, and TEDx Speaker. She’s passionate about getting 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030. Learn more about Anne here:
Following Day 4/100   Who’s Sarah Wood?
If you are in the Tech scene in the UK, you’ll already know the great Sarah Wood OBE. For those who don’t know her yet, you will be glad you do now! Sarah Wood is the chair and co-founder of Unruly, the global video advertising marketplace acquired by News Corp in 2015. She currently sits on the boards of clothing company Superdry plc and Tech Nation, the UK network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs. She is a technology ambassador for London, a member of the London Mayor’s Business Advisory Board and an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust Women Supporting WomenProgramme. Sarah has been named Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year, City AM Entrepreneur of the Year, and has been awarded an OBE for services to technology and innovation. She is also the author of best-selling career handbook Stepping Up: How to Accelerate Your Leadership Potential, which calls for more diverse, digital and empathetic business leaders. Learn more about her here. What’s her Funding Tip: I really love this Funding Tip from Sarah. It’s a well known assumption and perception that women have less self confidence than men. The Confidence Gap is certainly a thing, but the fact is, that’s simply not true. It’s just that we display confidence in a way that’s different to men, and because they are still the ones in the driving seat when it comes to funding founders, it can be harder for them to perceive our actions and behaviours as confident, simply because we don’t act the same way they do! Sarah’s confidence has taken her very far indeed, and it’s so refreshing to hear a woman tech founder instilling and encouraging that confidence in other female founders and entrepreneurs. The more confident you are and the more confidence you display, the more resources you’ll have access to — whether it’s attracting the right investors, team members, clients or business partners. See what you can be — that’s the theme of my Trailblazing Women series published here on medium and in the Huffpost. Of course, Sarah was one of the great women entrepreneurs I interviewed. I believe that raising funding, is all about a performance — you need to instill confidence in your investors to fund your next stage of development, to fuel your growth. This is why Sarah’s tip resonates so much with me. Why Should You Listen to Her Funding Tip?Part of the founding team in 2006, Sarah had led the full growth and transformation of Unruly, which now and has employs 258 Unrulies delivering wow across 15 locations worldwide, reaching and engaging an audience of 1.2 billion people worldwide. In 2012 Unruly secured a $25 million Series A investment before a successful exit to NewsCorp, led by Sarah, for $176 million in 2015. Now that’s what you call an exit! Above all, Sarah is a very focused, empthic and engaging leader, who gives her all in everything she does, bringing you along with her. When I reached out looking for suggestions for a location to host our first ever InvestHer Meetup in London, Sarah generously hosted us at her wonderful HQ. That’s just who she is. She is also an inspiring leader, author, speaker and mother. Yes, you can do and have it all! About Unruly: Unruly cofounders Sarah Wood, Matt Cooke (front), and Scott Button (source:Unruly)Unruly gets videos seen, shared and loved across the open web for brands that want to move people, not just reach people. By bringing emotional intelligence to digital advertising, its helps 91% of Ad Age 100 brands inform and inspire 1.44bn people around the world, using polite outstream formats on sites that people love.“Win minds and steal hearts through the power of our data-driven video marketplace. We use unique, first-party emotional data to power UnrulyX and help advertisers better engage global audiences on brand-safe, premium sites, while helping publishers grow revenue from their audiences.” Don’t just reach people. Move people. (Unruly website) Unruly has a unique corporate culture. “We pride ourselves on having a unique, nurturing and inclusive company culture that celebrates both personal and professional growth across all our global offices. We’ve even made it into Ad Age’s Best Places to Work in the US list over consecutive years!” Read what Unrulies think of our company culture. What is Unruly doing during Covid-19?Check out their latest articles about how they are supporting their customers and the ecosystem during the Covid-19 Crisis:
I can’t wait to see what Sarah does next. What I know for sure, is that it will be brilliant, innovative and empathic, just like her. “The best advice I ever had was someone who told me that advice was overrated! I think that’s true! It’s good to listen to what other people say, but ultimately you have to make the call for yourself and have the courage of your own convictions”. Learn more about Sarah Wood, here:
Want more Funding Tips?Sign up here : .. to get a daily Funding Tip to your email box or Visit the homepage of 100 Days of Funding Tips to get more funding tips. Please feel free to share them widely with other entrepreneurs and investors alike! Check out Global Invest Her website, to learn more about How to Get Ready for Funding Day 4/100 coming tomorrow! Anne About the Author: Anne Ravanona is Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, a recognised international Gender Diversity Advocate and Consultant, and TEDx Speaker. She’s passionate about getting 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030. Learn more about Anne here:
 Who’s Shelly Porges? Shelly Porges is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, a global consortium of venture funds pledged to invest in female-founded firms and Beyond the Billion, mobilizing LP investors into TBDF funds. She is also a Board Member of the Financial Alliance for Women and on the Advisory Board for Cornerstone Capital, Mindshift Capital, Different Funds and Global Invest Her. Ms. Porges also served as President of the North American Jury for Cartier Women’s Initiative for over a decade and as the former Senior Advisor, Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) at the U.S. State Department, a program she expanded to almost 150 countries, under Secretary Hillary Clinton. Before joining the State Department, she had a distinguished career in the private sector, including both corporate and entrepreneurial ventures. She served as executive head of marketing for American Express Canada and as chief marketing officer for Bank of America during a historic turn-around. Ms. Porges co-founded six ventures including Porges/Hudson Marketing; Scudder Weisel Capital LLC, a joint venture between Thomas Weisel Partners and Zurich Scudder Investments; and Global Payments Experts LLC, a payments industry advisory firm. Learn more about her here. What’s her Funding Tip:Investors are extremely busy people, like all of us. Most VC funds get anything from 2000–5000 or more pitches per year, which means that they spend most of their time talking to entrepreneurs, reviewing pitch decks, going to pitch competitions and other places for deal flow, always on the hunt for the next big thing. That’s why Shelly’s advice is so valuable on this point. You need to grab investors attention in the right way and be extremely mindful of their time. Know how each investor likes to be contacted. Do your homeowork. We’ll have plenty more tips coming your way soon on this topic too. Why Should You Listen to Her Funding Tip?Well, first of all, Shelly is a 7-time serial woman entrepreneur herself and before that, she was a very successful top executive in the banking world. She is an incredible women’s advocate and I’ve been honoured to have her on our Advisory board at Global Invest Her for many years. Shelly walks the talk when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs and thinks systemically, about taking bold measures to move things forward. Not content with investing in women-led companies, being a global advocate and speaker on the topic of funding women entrepreneurs, and the person behind the Global Entrepreneurship Program at the U.S. State department changing the ecosystem for entrepreneurs in over 150 countries, when Shelly saw the opportunity to make a difference in using her mobilizing and influencing skills to get more capital to women-led businesses, the Billion Dollar Fund was born. Learn more about her adventure below and I’d also recommend you listen to her podcast episode on our very own InvestHer Podcast — and see/hear for yourself, what a trailblazer she is. About Beyond the Billion“The Billion Dollar Fund for Women™ began as a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION by 2020 in women founders, rapidly increasing the funding pipeline. With the goal met in under 9 months, today, we are going Beyond The Billion™, targeting the top of the capital stack — driving returns through diversity.” What are they doing during the Covid-19 Crisis?Beyond the Billion are continuing to mobilise the next cohort of funds to take new pledges of investing in women entrepreneurs. They are also working on engaging with more LPs (Limited Partners ie investors who invest their money into funds, not the startups directly) to be able to mobilize even more capital to female founders, by showing that investing in women in great for the bottom line. “To continue to fuel innovation by women, we must change the larger game of capital: by ensuring venture funds who drive investments into women-founded companies are supported at large. Beyond a moral imperative, we see this as a business case — investing in women is good business.” (Beyond the Billion website) Learn more about Shelly Porges, here:
Want more Funding Tips?Sign up here : .. to get a daily Funding Tip to your email box or Visit the homepage of 100 Days of Funding Tips to get more funding tips. Please feel free to share them widely with other entrepreneurs and investors alike! Check out Global Invest Her website, to learn more about How to Get Ready for Funding Anne About the Author: Anne Ravanona is Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, a recognised international Gender Diversity Advocate and Consultant, and TEDx Speaker. She’s passionate about getting 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030. Learn more about Anne here:
Following  Day 2/100
Who’s Bedy Yang? Bedy Yang is a Managing Partner at 500 Startups, where she manages strategic partnerships, investor education program, marketing and events team. She helped 500 in the early days to set up the global investment footprint and invested and worked with startups such as Viva Real, Talk Desk, Conta Azul, Descomplica, Cine Papaya. Bedy is a super-connector, knows Brazil inside & out, knows technology, supports entrepreneurs & startup events via Brazil Innovators, and speaks Mandarin, Spanish, English, & Portuguese, as well as some Taiwanese and German. She is passionate about innovation. She founded Brazil Innovators, an organization that nurtures entrepreneurship and innovation through the connection to Silicon Valley and was also the co-organiser of Startup Weekend in Brazil and beyond. Previously she had a social business on income generation and fair trade working with Brazil and China. Talk about being a Global Diversity Champion for Startups!  Day 1/100
Who’s Julia Hartz ?Did you know that Eventbrite is one of the shining Women-led Unicorns? In 2018, CEO and Co-Founder Julia Hartz successfully led their IPO and is taking the company to new heights and leading with integrity throughout the coronavirus crisis, that is hitting the events business hard.  What's 100 Days of Funding Tips?
Every year, there is a global project called #100DaysProject, where anyone from around the world can pick a project to and do it for 100 days — whether it’s picking up a new language, playing the guitar, coding skills or whatever tickles your fancy. My dear friend Elena Rossini told me and Monica Parker about this project and given that we are all in lockdown in France during the Covid-19 crisis and in need of doing a thing we care about to help others, the 3 musketeers (or actually part of the WonderWomen — but that’s another story for later) comitted to doing it. Each of us chose a theme and became accountability buddies for each other to see this through. The 100 Days Project officially started on April 7th, and I’m starting today! Seeing as my life’s mission is to help get 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030 (and more beyond!), I thought it might be useful to share practical Funding Tips for entrepreneurs, to energise, inspire and nudge you towards taking that next step on your journey to funding — and having some fun along the way! |
About this series100 Days, 100 great funding tips and lots of advice from Investors, Funded Women and Funding experts - just for you! AuthorAnne Ravanona is Founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, a recognised international Gender Diversity Advocate and Consultant, and TEDx Speaker. She’s passionate about getting 1 Million Women Entrepreneurs Funded by 2030. ArchivesCategories |
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