2019: Breaking Down Barriers

At a time when our country is increasingly divided and polarized, we find the ecosystem that supports women in business more single-minded in its mission to level the playing field and more collaborative than ever. That mission and spirit of collaboration drove everything we did over the course of 2019, which was a transformative year for Project W.  We increased our network by 45%.  We expanded our footprint to Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, where we hosted a Project W reception at SXSW for members of our community.  We added several new partners to our network of collaborators who share our commitment to the success of female founders. And, in recognition of the work of Project W, DWT was recognized as Business of the Year by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business and Leadership Initiative.

The evidence for the importance of this work continues to mount. Not only are women-led companies developing groundbreaking solutions to intractable problems and tapping into massive market opportunities historically overlooked by white male founders and investors, studies continue to show that women-led companies outperform companies that lack gender diverse teams.

Inspired by this momentum, in 2019 we focused our energy on breaking down two of the key barriers to women succeeding:  lack of funding and lack of access.

Connecting Capital to Founders and Funders

TechCrunch recently announced that, in 2019, VC investment in female founders hit an all-time "high" of 2.8% (up from 2.2%). While better than no movement, this tells us that venture capital continues to vastly undervalue the investment opportunity in women-led companies -- what Morgan Stanley characterizes as the "Trillion Dollar Blind Spot."

We do not accept that female founders should see less than 1% year over year increase in investment, and we’re doing our part to move the needle.

Getting from Seed to Series A is often a make or break proposition for female founders.  Project W’s Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp aims to close the gender gap in Series A funding.  

 In April, our fourth annual Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp (WEB) focused on providing our cohort of 16 seed-stage companies the resources and tools they need to scale to raise Series A rounds.

The day included an interactive workshop conducted by Dana Kanze teaching our cohort to interrupt bias in the VC pitch process by reframing their answers to questions to focus on growth and opportunity rather than risk and challenges.

Women of color face even greater barriers in raising capital and we’ve teamed up with some of the most dynamic women we know to bust through those barriers.

Our friends at Black Women Talk Tech aim to develop an entire generation of Black women multi-millionaires who achieve successful exits. Project W was honored, once again, to sponsor BWTT’s Roadmap to Billions conference and to host a discussion on positioning a company for sale featuring investment banker Grace Legodi of Goldman Sachs. We were also thrilled to host the launch of BWTT’s Seattle Chapter in an evening that included a welcome from Seattle Chamber of Commerce CEO and former Mayor of Tacoma (Washington), Marilyn Strickland. 

We were excited to bring many founders in our network together for a no-holds barred discussion led by Chante Harris of Capalino+Company.  The conversation tackled the challenges that female founders of color face in raising capital and explored how they can access alternative sources of capital that see the opportunity rather than the risk of investing in underrepresented founders.

It’s not just the U.S.  Female founders in the U.K. have similar challenges accessing capital.  We were proud to introduce Project W to our sisters across the Atlantic and to make connections with the female-friendly investment ecosystem in New York. 

We were honored to collaborate with the U.K. Department of International Trade on a mission that brought 14 women entrepreneurs to the U.S. We had the opportunity to introduce New York investors in the Project W network to the cohort of U.K. female founders at a very special pitch evening at the British Consul General’s Residence in New York.

Female founders are taking the lead in driving social change, but traditional venture capital isn’t always aligned with those values.  We launched empoWer, an initiative to connect social enterprise companies with mission-driven capital.

Despite all the buzz around social impact investing, many companies with a mission to solve a big social problem do not fit the venture model of scale quick and exit fast. We launched our empoWer network to connect traditional philanthropic capital to social enterprise companies. Our kick-off luncheon in San Francisco brought together entrepreneurs, directors of private foundations, philanthropic advisers and managers of donor advised funds to brainstorm about how to direct this largely untapped pool of capital to mission-aligned businesses.  We followed that with a Springboard Enterprises Dolphin Tank featuring four female social entrepreneurs.

While critical, getting more capital to female founders is only part of the solution. We need to direct more capital to women VCs who can control investment decisions, and we’re excited to partner with women fund managers to make that happen.

To accelerate investment in female founders, the ecosystem needs more women LPs and more institutional LPs investing in funds managed by women.  That’s the problem being tackled by the leaders of the Masters Fund, who convene women VCs to hack the problems women fund managers face in raising their funds.  In 2019, we were honored to host more than 40 trailblazing women fund managers and investors at gatherings in Seattle, New York and LA.

Opening doors through the power of community.

Access can be as valuable as money. Connections and warm intros open doors that are often otherwise closed to women.  Project W is focused on opening those doors through our own networks and through our network of partners.

Women need mentors and peer support to navigate the corporate ladder and build their businesses. Through Project W’s industry-based communities, we’re providing those resources.

This summer, we launched RiseTogether, an LA-based community that brings together rising women in the media and entertainment sectors. Tackling challenges such as gender and age bias in negotiating entertainment deals, this group aims to empower women in the field to change the culture, set the tone and accelerate progress towards gender equity in the media and entertainment business. 

Our FinTech Women community in New York has been connecting disrupters and incumbents in the financial services sector for more than three years. And, after a soft launch in November 2018, FinTech Women is now firmly part of the San Francisco ecosystem, offering programming featuring women decision makers across the capital spectrum.

Project W leverages our network of like-minded partners to make connections and to share opportunities for women building businesses and advancing their careers.

We believe in the power of collaboration and the network effect of women supporting women. We can’t do it by ourselves.  It is our privilege to have partnered in 2019 with these amazing organizations and initiatives that share our mission of helping women succeed:

Springboard Enterprises, Black Women Talk Tech, NY Fashion Tech Lab, Female Founders Alliance, the Vinetta Project, WomensVCFund, HITLAB’s Women’s Health Tech Challenge, Alice, The Riveter, Point 25, Retail X, the Fourth Floor and The Chain.

By building our community of women who are changing the world, we are empowering our own women lawyers and staff at DWT to be leaders in their communities, in the profession and at our firm.

Project W is DWT’s commitment to help women succeed – and that means our own women, too.  We are proud to have more than 60 DWT women involved in Project W initiatives.  By helping to develop the next generation of women C-level executives, we are developing the next generation of women partners at DWT and making progress towards achieving gender parity in our own partnership.

What’s next?

We have set our sights even higher for 2020.  Here is just some of what’s to come:

?We’re bringing our Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp to Seattle on February 10 and looking forward to our fifth WEB in New York on April 30.

?We’ll be back at SXSW the weekend of March 13 with our friends from Springboard. And, we’ll be hosting a reception for the Project W community on March 15 at The Riveter.  Let us know if you will be in Austin.  We’d love to have you join us.

?We’re rolling out new initiatives around the country:

• In Portland (Oregon) and Bellevue (Washington), our Women Owning the C-Suite series of workshops will focus on advancing women entrepreneurs and executives to C-level and Board positions
• Our Women in Cannabis community based in LA will bring together the women who are leading that rapidly growing industry
• Building on our network in Seattle, we plan to connect women throughout our community in Seattle, San Francisco and New York who are addressing issues of women’s health in the U.S. and around the globe.

?We’ll be doubling down on our commitment to supporting female founders of color with more in-depth problem-solving sessions with our collaborator Capalino+Company and at the 2020 BWTT Roadmap to Billions Conference. 

?And, we are excited to continue our longstanding and valued collaboration with Springboard to focus on our shared mission to promote innovation in women’s health and to support women making breakthroughs in healthcare.

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Looking back on 2019, we are filled with immense gratitude to all the women and men who have supported our work and who share our vision of achieving gender parity in all walks of life. We are inspired more than ever by the women who are building companies to make the world healthier, more sustainable and more equitable. As we head into 2020 and the promise of a new decade, we are brimming with optimism that, despite all the challenges that remain, we will see our vision of a future --where women lead many of the most important companies in the world -- become a reality.  At Project W, we look forward to being a part of that future.

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