Female founders receive less than 2% of venture funding

I want to change that.

Introducing Conteur Capital.

I started thinking about raising a fund about four years ago. I was having a lot of conversations with my business manager at the time, weighing the pros and cons, but ultimately felt it just wasn’t the right moment.

In hindsight, 2021 would’ve been an amazing time to raise funds because capital was really flowing, particularly toward emerging and diverse managers. We can attribute that to what we like to call the “guilt capital” in a post-George Floyd era (which makes me particularly bitter to talk about because now we’re seeing the dismantling of DEI across major corporations). But I really believe timing is everything, and for me, it didn’t fully click until I was pregnant with Claude. Toward the end of that pregnancy, I knew Conteur Capital was going to be the next step in my career.

I officially closed the doors on HBFIT so that I could really focus all of my energy and efforts into building Conteur Capital and sourcing the right team, which is how I met my business partner, Jamie Woodard. HBFIT in its last iteration was a curated marketplace. We were using Canal via Shopify to integrate alongside different brands and it was a super interesting platform for discovery and brand recognition. I seemed to be an early adopter and I loved it, but I was ready to sink my teeth into something else.

The business partner meet-cute

The way we met is pretty amazing. I’m an investor in Topicals, and when they were raising their Series A, there was a lot of interest from a bunch of different firms including CAVU Consumer Partners. I’m close to the founder of Topicals and friendly with a partner at CAVU, so I was helping the founder navigate terms and advocating for CAVU to lead the round.

Jamie was working with that partner at that time, and although I wasn’t on emails with her, we both played a big role in getting the deal done and they’re still Topicals’ largest investor. FYI: You’ve probably been hearing a lot about CAVU recently because they owned a large chunk of Poppi, and Poppi obviously just had that massive PepsiCo acquisition to the tune of almost 2 billion.

Okay so fast forward: we close the deal on Topicals, I haven't even met Jamie. I'm not even on emails with her. But two months later, I'm on vacation in Formentera, which is an island off of Ibiza, and Ibiza is an island off of Spain. So I’m on an island off of an island.

Jamie happens to be there and one of her friends recognizes me and tells her, and Jamie’s like, “Wait, what?! I’ve been hearing her name all summer.” She comes over and lets me know that she’s here with a bunch of her classmates from Harvard Business School. I turn around and see a group of 15 diverse HBS students; I send them all a round of shots on me that says “We need more people of color in venture. Call me when you graduate. Here's my number. Here's my email."

Jamie ends up calling me when she graduates. I’d actually seen her again when I came to speak at the HBS Retail Club, and when she reached out after graduating, she was originally just asking for advice. I already knew I wanted to work with her in a larger capacity but I played it cool. When we finally met, she told me she didn’t take the job she’d been considering and was figuring out her next move. I said, “Oh. Well, here's what I wanna build, and I think you should come and build it with me."

She said yes. And come September 2023, just three months after Claude was born, we got to work. We started by combing through my angel portfolio, defining our thesis, pinpointing the stage we wanted to play in, and really doing the groundwork to set up the firm.

Venture funding = still antiquated as f*

Just like launching a company, you need everything: the right team, lawyers, fund formation docs, a data room, branding strategy, capital, a name. It’s a lot. But it’s also a natural extension of the angel investments I’ve made. (For reference, I’ve invested in Sienna Naturals, Julie, Monte’s, Ceremonia, Taché Pistachio Milk, Ghia, Our Place, and more.)

The stat that really, really fuels me is that Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs… and yet they still receive less than 2% of venture funding. Women overall get less than 2%. Brands in women's health got less than 2% of funding in 2024. And zero percent of assets under management (AUM) are led by Black women. Zero. That tells me this work is hard. If it were easy, it’d be done already, right? And it hasn’t been. Not even close.

My edge as a GP is rooted in my experience as a founder, an operator, an investor, and perhaps most importantly, as a consumer. I have a platform that many GPs don’t. My network, my background, my credibility in health and wellness give me a competitive advantage. That space isn’t just something I work in; it’s synonymous with who I am.

I am talent, I am an investor, I am an expert in influencer marketing. I understand how these deals get done because I’ve done them from every angle. My network allows me to bring visibility and access in ways that most GPs simply can’t (and don’t know how to). That multifaceted lens is my edge in this vertical.