What you can learn from Ellevest's (unconventional, at best) funding announcement

Today, I’ve announced a new funding round for Ellevest, a digital investment platform.

But before you imagine your typical “fintech” funding round (think bro’s investing in bro’s), there’s something different here: Ellevest is a digital investment platform for women. So it’s for women, built by women, in a company led by a woman (me)….and with this announcement it’s backed by women (and some woke men).

Our new investors include Venus Williams (yeah, that Venus Williams, extending her work around closing gender money gaps), Mellody Hobson (President of Ariel Investments and a big glass-ceiling-breaker herself), a number of unbelievable venture capitalists in Silicon Valley (think Theresia Gouw, Jennifer Fonstad, Sonja Perkins, and Miriam Rivera). They join hedge-funder Karen Finerman and businesswomen Andrea Jung. And we love diversity (and tech-company-building know-how), so we have Khosla Ventures leading this round.

I know, right?

But beyond the facts of this, there are a few lessons I think for you LinkedIn’ers on how this came together.

1/ Would you believe that Ellevest could only get off the ground because I found my Chief Investment Officer, Sylvia Kwan, through a LinkedIn search?

Yay, go LinkedIn.

This was not an area in which I was going to cut corners; we had to have the “best” CIO I could find. I also believed I needed one who could combine lots of experience with a new way of looking at investing. (At Ellevest, we practice true goal-based investing, so the old “beat the S&P” doesn’t cut it.) Now, believe me, I know a lot of CIOs, given my background on Wall Street. And I know a lot of people who know a lot of CIOs.  But I “kissed a lot of frogs” and couldn’t find the right one. Then, a year into my search, I sat down at my computer, spent a couple of hours on LinkedIn, and found Sylvia.

When her investing background popped up, with her advanced degree from Stanford and her experience in both more traditional and start-up investment firms, I knew I was onto something. (On the other hand, when I reached out to her, she thought her friends were pranking her.)

Thank you, LinkedIn.

2/ Old-fashioned networking really matters. I’ve written before that my path to starting Ellevest began with my sitting next to Arthur Levitt (former Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission) on a flight out of Phoenix. I said “You’re Arthur Levitt!!” and of course he said “And you’re…..???”

It got better after that; we struck up a conversation, and over the years he introduced me to a handful of folks. Not a lot, but a handful. One of them introduced me to a banker at Goldman, who introduced me to a start-up CEO, who introduced me to a venture capitalist, who introduced me to another CEO, who introduced me to another…..you get the point. Ten introductions later, I met my Ellevest co-founder.

Well, it turns out that same string let down a different path. I met a venture capitalist….for whom Ellevest was too late-stage, but he sent me over to Khosla Ventures, which is now an investor. Ok, important lesson: network the old-fashioned way.

3/ But, wait, there’s another lesson here: because I had actually interviewed the partner at Khosla for a job when I was Director of Research at Sanford Bernstein. Awkwardness alert!!

But, no, it wasn’t awkward, because it had been a great interaction at the time, he claimed to remember some advice I gave him back then, and he left with a positive impression of the firm and the interaction.

So, the lesson here: small world, long life.

The same is true for my meeting Venus Williams. We were introduced by a gentleman who used to work for me at Smith Barney. As she began to turn her attention to her business ventures, he connected us….years after he and I worked together. Small world, long life.

4/ Women + money = Positive power

At Ellevest, we are building an investing platform for women. Not in the “pink it and shrink it” way, but in the use-powerful-technology-to-take-into-account-women’s-longer-lives- and-earlier-salary-peaks way.

If we can get women to invest more in the markets and offer the opportunity to build more wealth over their lives, it’s good for them, for their families, for the markets, for society.

If we can get more women to invest in more companies that serve women, we can build more great businesses, build more wealth, serve women better, grow the economy.

It’s all good.

Wait. What’s that sound you hear? It may be the death knell of the Queen Bee, that woman who didn’t help other women get ahead in business. We have here women investing in a company to help women invest. And, in doing so, they are supporting other with real dollars, so that those women can grow their own dollars. It makes us all more powerful.

Sallie Krawcheck is the CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women.  She is also Chair of Ellevate Network, the global professional women’s network. She is soon-to-be author of Own It: The Power of Women at Work.

For information about Ellevest, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registered investment adviser and its financial advisory services, please visit the firm’s website (www.Ellevest.com) or the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website (www.adviserinfo.sec.gov). Investing entails risk including the possible loss of principal and there is no assurance that the investment will provide positive performance over any period of time.