Fireside Chat, Interview
Deborah Jackson and Davida Herzl: Advancing the Future of Women Entrepreneurs
- Identifies a significant capital gap for female-founded companies with new technologies, noting only 2% of venture capital goes to women-founded companies and 0.5% to women of color.
- Outlines a plan to increase access for investors to participate in early-stage companies with real products, revenues, and customers at the Series A level.
- Targets specific investment criteria including companies with female founding team members, medical or technological breakthroughs, and diverse executive teams to drive better returns.
- Projects Plum Alley members will commit approximately $1.5 million or more annually in a recurring model.
- Anticipates a long-term journey to address deep structural biases in investing, driven by the need for diverse perspectives to solve societal problems and serve female customer bases.
- Plans to continue providing hyper-local air pollution and climate emissions data to fill critical gaps in infrastructure required for global Paris climate agreement implementation.
- Envisions building technology infrastructure for ubiquitous "environmental intelligence" by combining IoT trends to better understand hyper-local climate effects on human health.
- Seeks investors who are deeply values-aligned, mission-driven, and possess a long-term view to support companies addressing important world issues and environmental impacts.
- Commits to radical transparency regarding environmental impacts and aims to prove that globally impactful companies can achieve massive financial success while delivering on social missions.
- Includes a risk assessment regarding the slow pace of translating awareness into action, emphasizing the substantial work required to overcome the current lack of investors focused on meaningful technological breakthroughs.