🔒Annie Lamont-led angel investor group aims to boost women venture capital funding

In 2020, Americans filed more than 4.2 million applications for startup businesses — a 24% increase from the previous year and the largest number of applicants over the past 15 years, according to U.S. Census figures.

Many startups were launched by women — who were 1.8 times as likely as men to be laid off during the pandemic. Despite the uptick in female-led companies over the past two years, women continue to face a key challenge in building a strong foundation for business growth: access to venture capital.

In 2019, only 2.8% of venture capital went to support female-led endeavors, a figure that dropped to 2.3% during the pandemic, according to data from Crunchbase, which tracks early-stage company trends.

Meantime, over the past three decades, the average percentage of venture capital received by all-female founded companies has been 2.4%, Harvard research shows. Even among venture capital firms, women remain significantly underrepresented. A 2020 study by Axios found that only 12.4% of venture capital decision-makers are women.

It’s a reality that Annie Lamont, founder of Stamford venture capital firm Oak HC/FT and wife of Gov. Ned Lamont, wants to change.

In 2019, Lamont — who has worked in the venture capital industry for more than 30 years — said she experienced firsthand that lack of female representation while at an investment forum.

“I looked around the room and there were very few women there,” Lamont said.

One woman who was in attendance was Alison Malloy, director of investments with Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state’s quasi-public venture capital arm.

“[Annie and I] realized we needed to put some effort around creating a women’s investor group and bringing more women together who are interested in supporting and growing companies in Connecticut,” said Malloy, the niece of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

With support from CI, Lamont and Malloy helped found Tidal River Investments, a network of predominantly female angel investors.

While Lamont does not manage nor invest in Tidal River’s portfolio of companies, she often attends and speaks at the group’s events, encouraging women investors to get involved.

Since its 2019 founding, Tidal River has grown to a network of nearly 150 accredited female investors. Over the past 12 months, the network collectively made more than $700,000 in investments to eight early-stage, Connecticut-based companies ranging in industries from education technology to health care and consumer goods.

Among Tidal River-invested companies, five are female-led, one is co-founded by male and female partners and one is male-led.

Malloy said the group’s goal is to fund Connecticut startups with the potential to grow and create return on investment, regardless of the founders’ genders.

Building a network

Jennie Ripps is the founder and CEO of Greenwich-based Owl’s Brew, which makes organic botanical mixers and spiked sparkling tea. She’s part of the competitive spirits industry where fewer than 4% of companies are led by women. Owl’s Brew, founded in 2019, was the first early-stage company to receive venture funding from Tidal River investors.

The undisclosed amount, Ripps said, was used to support marketing and expand the company’s sales team. From 2020 to 2021, Owl’s Brew’s revenue grew by 218% and it expanded distribution to 18 states. The company has also more than doubled its employee base to 15 over the past three years.

For Ripps, the value of women angel investor groups like Tidal River goes beyond the infusion of capital.

“To have their investment is wonderful, but to build a network and a sense of community is really important,” Ripps said.

CI’s Malloy serves on Owl’s board of directors and Ripps said she tries to meet regularly with other members of Tidal River’s founding team, which has expertise in marketing, debt financing, structuring investments and board management.

“There’s a real strategic value to the network,” Ripps said.

Pooling resources

Malloy said she hopes to replicate Ripps’ success for more startups. Tidal River has met with more than 50 companies since its launch. The founding team, Malloy said, reviews new applicants weekly and conducts 30-minute phone screens for startups that show promise.

The entrepreneurs who make the cut are invited to pitch directly to Tidal River’s angel investor network before undergoing a due-diligence process. Malloy said Tidal River looks for companies that already have a lead investor that their funding can supplement.

One of the benefits of pooling resources as an angel network is lower investment thresholds, she said.

“Companies typically don’t want individual investors on their cap table at less than $25,000,” Malloy explained. “But with a [angel investor] group, we can create special purpose vehicles that allow members to make investments as low as $5,000 alongside other angel investors.”

Angel investor networks also create a more interactive venture capital process, said Sloan Saunders, CEO of Intellihealth, a New Canaan-based startup that he co-founded with his wife, Katherine, and Dr. Louse Aronne to scale obesity treatment through a combination of tech-enabled behavioral tools and virtual clinical care.

“With traditional venture capital investments, [a startup] is talking with one person who takes the lead and brings the [investment] opportunity back to a committee,” Saunders said. “With an angel investor group [like Tidal River], you can speak to a larger group who can ask their individual questions.”

Malloy said participation in Tidal Rivers’ pitch events — where invited startups share their business plans and funding needs — are held quarterly and have consistently drawn more than 60 women, even amidst virtual events during the height of the pandemic.

Malloy is hopeful that, as Tidal River’s network grows, the group will exceed $1 million in investments annually. She said the founding team is also exploring creating its own investment fund that could supplement or further enhance investments from its angel investors.

Lamont said she is encouraged by the momentum she’s seeing among women in venture capital. While still a small percentage, she said, the number of female venture capitalists has been growing over the past several years.

It’s a trend she thinks is important as startups in sectors like consumer goods, health care and education technology continue to grow both nationally and in Connecticut.

“When it comes to a family’s healthcare or consumer decisions, most often those decisions are made by women,” Lamont said. “So they can bring a lot of insight and perspective [into companies in those sectors].”