$20-million fund focuses on female-led startups
Leading charge is Danielle Graham, who has strong ties to Waterloo Region tech scene
WATERLOO REGION — Startups founded or led by women receive about three per cent of the venture capital financing in this country. A new $20-million fund aims to change that.
“We have a long way to go,” said Danielle Graham, a founder and investment principal at Sandpiper Ventures. “That’s the current state. I have seen it change over the years from two to three per cent.”
The Sandpiper fund comes out of The Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund. A powerful trio of businesswomen from Atlantic Canada have worked for more than year to establish Sandpiper. Graham will be overseeing investments in female-led startups across the country.
She is well known in the Toronto-Waterloo Technology Corridor.
Graham established the Fierce Founders Bootcamp at Communitech for women-led startups, and is on the board of directors of the Golden Triangle Angel Network. Graham is also on the investment committee for the Archangel Investment Fund, which focuses on early-stage startups. She is a former principal at Dream Maker Ventures, a Toronto venture capital firm founded by women and racialized groups.
The Sandpiper fund will have a 10-year term, like most others, but it will retain 60 per cent of its capital for follow-on funding rounds.
“So we will have a larger amount of follow-on and a smaller number of direct investments to start,” said Graham.
While Graham is a founder and investment principal, she will be working closely with three other founders who are also managing directors. They have decades of experience in business, technology and investing.
They include Cathy Bennett, a former finance minister in Newfoundland and chief executive officer, Rhiannon Davies and Sarah Young. Bennett, Davies and Young have long experience and wide contacts in Eastern Canada. Graham’s experience is centred in the TorontoWaterloo corridor.
By this fall the team expects to have the full $20 million on hand. It plans to make investments during the next two to three years.
Combined, the Sandpiper team has deep knowledge of female-led startups from Waterloo Region to Toronto and Halifax.
“We have a significant pipeline,” said Graham. “There is a great number of companies that we have been building strong relationships with, and we look forward to being able to commit some funding to them.”
Graham, who is based in Toronto, will continue to make regular visits to this region.
“I will certainly stay involved in all the important work done in Kitchener-Waterloo,” she said.
At the big innovation hubs and accelerators across Canada, about 30 per cent of the startups are headed by women. And that’s only after years of work to build programs that support women entrepreneurs, said Graham, and the same thing needs to happen with the LGBTQ+ and Black entrepreneurs.
“Under-representation will continue until there is a concerted effort to bring people into the ecosystem, to open up the network and provide specific programming that address their needs so that they feel included,” said Graham.
“There is a lot of work being done now because of Black Lives Matter, but it is almost like groups have to be called out before they are willing to be inclusive,” said Graham.