"I want to give female founders the opportunity to access capital"

Female entrepreneur Tijen Onaran wants to raise money with a new VC fund specifically for female founders. In this interview, she explains how things are going so far, why she believes the fund is necessary and what it has to do with her own experience.

Ms. Onaran, you want to set up a venture capital fund specifically for female founders. Where did the idea come from?

The idea came about because I had negative experiences with venture capital myself. When I founded Global Digital Women, I had problems accessing venture capital. I didn't have a large network or access and had to resort to equity capital in the end. Many women have this problem, they have reflected this to me in many, many conversations and I believe that this contributes to the fact that only 15 percent of all start-ups are founded by women. I have set myself the goal of changing that in 2021.

So in your opinion, the main reason for this is that women lack the networks.

That is certainly one reason, but I see two more that build on this. Firstly, 97 percent of venture capitalists are led by men and men promote men and men give money to men. I don't think they even do that on purpose. They don't say: 'Oh, we only invest in men because we think it's great'. But they are only surrounded by men, at events, on social media, in their networks. It's easy to overlook women as founders, but also as a target group. But there is a lot of previously wasted potential.

What do you mean by that?

That brings us to the second reason: when women start up, it's often about supposedly female ideas. This is also referred to as femtech, i.e. products by women for women. One example is ooia, a start-up that has started producing period underwear. When women present such ideas to a fund run by men, they don't understand the products or target group at all or underestimate them. In modern parlance, you could say they lack awareness. At ooia, for example, Carsten Maschmeyer told the female founders that he couldn't do anything with it.

Investing in women is not charity. It has long been important for companies to have diverse teams, diverse management boards, diverse supervisory boards.

Tijen Onaran, entrepreneur

Some say that start-ups founded by women make less profit and scale more slowly precisely because they tend to be in the consumer sector. Others think this is a prejudice. Couldn't it also be because women receive less venture capital?

Women often approach their start-up differently, their plan is more sustainable. Their goal is usually not to sell in a year or two and make a big exit, but to set up a healthy company and keep a solid budget. This may contradict the scaling model of many venture capital funds. However, this does not mean that start-ups run by women yield lower returns in the long term. On the contrary: above all, their companies make more profit at the end of the day.

You would like to have 100 million euros to invest in start-ups founded by women. How much do you have together?

I have already received a lot of proactive inquiries from family offices, companies and private individuals and we are in contact with a lot of people who understand the topic. But the "German restraint" doesn't just exist on paper, it is also practiced.

What is the biggest hurdle you have to overcome with donors?

The topic of diversity has still not arrived in business life for many. They see diversity as something you should support and something you have to position yourself as. But it's not charity to invest in women. It has long been important for companies to have diverse teams, diverse management boards, diverse supervisory boards. I don't think everyone has understood this yet, even though we are already well on our way in 2021. Investors will be judged more by what they have invested in - and what social implications this has.

Should you get the money together: What criteria would the start-ups in which you will invest with the fund have to fulfill?

First of all, they have to be founded by women. Then sustainability will certainly play a role, that's obvious. We won't commit ourselves to individual sectors, the ideas are too diverse for that. However, I can also imagine supporting women in areas where there have been few female founders to date, for example in the tech sector - perhaps even more with a consumer focus. It's not as if women lack the know-how. It's the money that's missing and that's what we bring with the fund.

If you had already received money from venture capitalists as a young female founder, you might never have had the idea of setting up this fund. Looking back, would you have preferred to have venture capital?

At the time, it was perhaps right that I didn't receive any venture capital. But I didn't grow up in a family that simply gave me a bit of play money. Everything is hard-earned and I realized that it is much more difficult to survive with equity capital because it takes much longer and you grow more slowly. Back then, I couldn't choose between equity and venture capital. I want to give female founders the opportunity to access capital. That's what this fund is supposed to do.

Thank you very much for the interview.

Personal details: Tijen Onaran is an entrepreneur, investor and bestselling author. She is the founder of Global Digital Women, an international consultancy firm specializing in diversity issues. Manager Magazin recently named her one of the top 100 most influential women in German business and the business magazine Capital named her one of the top 40 under 40 talents in business.

Female Founders Week 2021

This article is part of our special on female entrepreneurship in Germany.

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