You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported on how female founders raised Paul just two percent of venture capital in the US last year. That was the smallest share since twenties sixteen. And it's really a sign that efforts to to really diversify the
famously male dominated industry, I mean, continues to struggle. It's an old story, unfortunately, No, it's a frustrating one because there has been lots of efforts over the years financial services to change that narrative around and it just never seen to get that real tracks and particularly in Silicon Valley. All Right, So we have a great guest on this and working on that gap that could persists there between men and women, especially when it comes to raising BC money.
Ruth Fox later, she is partner at Anthemus. It's a fintech venture capital firm. She's lived and worked around the globe. She joins us on the phone from San Francisco. Ruth, good to have you here with Paul and myself. How are you? And first of all, let's just get to the crux of this, why is it still so difficult for women to launch companies and access capital and get some help here? Yeah, I mean, I think and first of all, thank you so much for having me today.
I think that it's a really simple answer in some ways to a somewhat complex question. The answer is really discrimination. And this is kind of systemic discrimination that women face and also kind of bilateral day to day discrimination. Um. I think where I'm really encouraged is that I have
a portfolio which is full of outstanding female founders. I am a partner in the venture capital practice at Anthemous, so a little bit against all odds, myself and I have a lot of optimism, but you know also, um, we have a lot of work to do. And and Ruth, one of the things when I think about the venture capital firm, you know, you think of places like you know, Sandhill Road out in Silicon Valley. It's just it feels,
it looks, it sounds very insular. Like if I can't raise my capital from some of those people out in the valley, and I know it's getting better with Austin's of the world and think think things like that, but boy, if I can't make it there, it's hard to make it anywhere in the VC world. Is that changing at all? Yeah? I think it is, particularly for the sector that I
look at, which is financial services. London and New York and Singapore and places you know, where the markets UM really are have always been quite vibrant venture capital scenes. I think that the diversification though that you're talking about of venture capital and where it lives, the geographic diversification certainly has a role to play in diversifying the founders
that we invest in UM. There's a sort of sense that venture capital came from a small group of people who are looking to invest in people that look like them. For me, this is just completely counterintuitive. Venture capital is a game of exceptions. You're looking for exceptional companies that are going to beat a lot of odds and really
kind of you know, strange stories, interesting founders. So how would you get those exceptional outcomes if you keep investing in people that you know look the same and have the same kind of pedigree. It doesn't really make any sense. You know. Somebody once said to me a few years ago that what you need is more women to create a Google or an Apple or so and so forth and then the money will come. Is that what it's about?
Is it that simple or difficult? No, there really are some exceptional female founders that have raised an enormous amount of capital and and also run huge companies. So I don't think that we should. You know, it's quite exceptional for anyone to build a company at that scale, right, UM, I think we probably need more women in venture capital.
This is something that I've been working on UH in a lot of different places, both at Anthemous and also UM in another organization that that I've been working on in Europe. UM. I think that female investors tend to back diverse founders, So I think this is one kind of simple band aid solution. But I think it's also generally just a sense that venture capital and great ideas can come from anywhere and can really stem from UM any background, any diverse background, and probably the more diverse,
the more likely people are to have outsized impact. So Ruth I do a lot of work with DO universities, Graduate School of Business and in their venture capital fund, their private equity fund, their alternative investment funds. UH teams, there's a lot of women represented. What happens where do you tend to lose them. If you will, Where does it not translate, because again I see a lot of demand at the university level. Yeah, it's a tough question for me to answer because I really do UM invest
in a much more diverse way than many of my peers. UM. I think that, you know, sometimes women will UM self select out. You know, this is something which has been studied and shown not only in venture capital but in in other fields. UM that there are certain demands or expectations of demands around building a startup UM where women
feel like it's incompatible with other choices that they might make. Uh. Similarly, I've I've spoken with a lot of women on their path to partner and venture capital firms who say the same thing. You know, will this be compatible with having a family? I think it absolutely can be. I think we probably need some more support structures and and also kind of deeper understanding amongst the LP and GP world of what it takes and how we can create support
for exceptional people to bring exceptional ideas to life. It's really never the founder alone who does that. So how do we help founders create teams which are more sustainable and allow them to achieve a lot of their different goals and objectives that could be um, you know one one answer. I think obviously there's also just a funding gap. Yeah, we certainly see it continue to play out. Ruth Fox later partner at Anthemus