Atlantic fund co-founds national group for female entrepreneurs

The Atlantic Women's Venture Fund and its Alberta counterpart are forming a new organization they hope will become a nationwide vehicle for supporting femaleled businesses.

Canada51 is now a partnership between the AWVF and the Calgary-based female investment group The51.

In its initial stages, Canada51 will probably involve the two founding organizations and their members investing in and supporting each other's portfolios.

But they hope it will grow into a cross-country organization as more individuals and organizations get involved, and that it will support female entrepreneurs in all parts of Canada. The vision is to develop investment leads and to create programming together.

“We perceived in each other this common mandate and said, ‘Isn't this fascinating?'” said AWVF co-founding partner Rhiannon Davies in an interview. “We both have an incredibly powerful investment proposition, and we can amplify it by working together. But won't it become even more powerful if it becomes a movement?”

The Atlantic Women's Venture Fund is still in its formative stages, and its steering committee hopes to announce its initial close in the third quarter of this year. The goal is a fund worth at least $20 million, and it will be a free-standing body independent of Canada51.

Its principals – Davies and

Sarah Young of Halifax, and Cathy Bennett of St. John's — want to address the shortage of capital for Atlantic Canadian startups in general and female founders in particular.

They see this as not just a social mission but also as an attractive business model because it will channel capital into a vibrant and underfinanced segment of the Canadian economy. Women founders currently account for four per cent of the capital raised by Canadian startups, even though female founders have a unique perspective on entrepreneurial opportunities. For example, women make 80 per cent of healthcare decisions and up to 85 per cent of consumer purchasing decisions.

The fund will invest in companies with male CEOS if there is at least one woman in a senior C-level position.

The AWVF aims to be non-competitive and collaborative, as it is demonstrating with the creation of Canada51. The partnership's website allows men and women who are interested in backing female-led companies to sign up to join the development of the organization.

“We know we can transform Canada's economy in this decade and beyond, and our partnership with AWVF is pivotal to stitching this next economic wave together,” said The51 co-founder Shelley

Kuipers in a statement.

Though the Atlantic Women's Venture Fund itself is unlikely to make investments before late 2020, some of its members have already backed female-led companies on their own. They are serving as angel investors to such companies as Halifax-based life sciences ventures Motryx (led by Franziska Broell) and Coloursmith Labs (led by Gabrielle Massone).

“We know this isn't going to happen overnight,” said Davies.

“Canada51 is really about bringing collective capacity together and identifying organizations that are all pursuing the same goals.”

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Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund co-founding partner Rhiannon Davies.