By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
Cazenovia resident Kate Brodock has spent the last 15 years in the tech startup world, working primarily in operations and marketing.
Recently, Brodock partnered with Allyson Kapin to launch the W Fund, a venture capital (VC) fund that invests in early stage, high-growth tech startups led by women or other founders who have been traditionally underrepresented or under-funded in the startup space.
Brodock and Kapin are leaders of two of the largest and longest-standing global networks for women-led startups.
Brodock has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester, an MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a master of arts degree in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
She is currently the CEO of Women 2.0, a “for-profit, for-good” technology and media company focused on gender equality, diversity and inclusion. She previously ran a large, 60-chapter global nonprofit focused on women in tech and entrepreneurship.
“[I’ve] been heavily involved in the startup community, going to and organizing events to start, and, as my expertise grew, speaking, mentoring, and advising,” Brodock said. “Much of that work has been focused on gender and representation in entrepreneurship globally . . . That experience culminated in me taking over [Women 2.0] four years ago . . . The fund is a natural extension of all of the work I’ve already done in the area.”
Kapin is the founder of the non-profit Women Who Tech, and the co-founder of Rad Campaign — a digital agency committed to organizations seeking to change the world.
Brodock and Kapin have worked in partnership towards similar goals for years.
“She’s run accelerator programs and pitch competitions for women tech founders for years, [so the W Fund] was a great fit,” Brodock said. “I also pulled in a few investment professionals, namely Lindsay Karas Stencel, out of Columbus, Ohio, [who] I’ve worked with as an EIR (entrepreneur-in-residence) at LaunchNY. [She] brings over a decade of experience working in six funds, and crunching through over 1,500 startups deals.”
Brodock and Kapin set a target fund size of $48 million to symbolize the percentage of funding (48 percent) that would need to shift from male- to female-led companies in order to achieve gender parity in terms of VC dollars.
“For the last few years, the amount of VC funding in the U.S. that’s gone towards women-led startups has been just over two percent,” Brodock explained. “And for Latinas and Black women, [it’s] 0.32 percent and 0.0006 percent, respectively. Dismal is putting it lightly. So, in order to at least get to gender parity . . . 48 percent of that funding needs to shift to women. We’re putting a dent in that.”
According to Brodock, 70 percent of the W Fund’s investments will go towards women. Half of that 70 percent will go towards women who also come from another group that has been traditionally under-funded based on race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identity, socioeconomic status, nationality, age, disability and location among other factors.
The remaining 30 percent will go towards any founder from a traditionally under-funded group, towards a solution that directly solves for issues around diversity and inclusion, or towards a solution that addresses the needs of a traditionally underserved market.
Every potential founder undergoes a rigorous business due diligence process focused on such metrics as addressable market, go-to-market strategy, and current traction.
“We also make sure we do a decent amount of research on the founders themselves, as that’s a really important part of running a company well,” said Brodock. “Our own due diligence is then pushed through an investment committee made up of advisors and sector experts.”
According to Brodock, the fund mostly invests nationally and is primarily interested in five cities — Nashville, Atlanta, Portland (Oregon), Austin and Chicago.
“We certainly invest outside of those cities,” Brodock added. “We’re also excited to do a few international deals.”
The W Fund signed its first deal out of New York City, for a “turnkey SaaS (software as a service) solution” for live-streamed fitness classes.
“As you can imagine, they’ve been killing it the last few months, and we got excellent terms on the deal,” Brodock said.
The firm is about to sign another deal out of Portland for a company that does direct-to-consumer delivery of fresh farm products.
Brodock and Kapin started raising money following a traditional VC model, but they eventually shifted to a rolling fund.
“Essentially, [it’s] is a series of quarterly mini venture funds packaged up to run like a traditional fund — ours with the length of 16 quarters, which mimics the normal investment period for a VC fund,” Brodock explained. “There are two big benefits for us. We’re able to make investments immediately, as opposed to waiting until we have a large part of our investment capital committed. This allows us to showcase the types of deals we’ll be getting into. There’s also a lot of flexibility for the limited partners (LPs) — they’re the investors in the fund — because they can join us for 16 quarters or four quarters if they want to, they just have to meet the quarterly minimum.”
According to Brodock, the W Fund partners have been able to use their reputations with founders and relationships with other investment firms to secure a steady flow of business proposals/investment offers and to “get in on deals that a lot of people can’t.”
Brodock also noted that in addition to potentially high returns, LPs in the W Fund are provided the opportunity to help further the fund’s mission.
“We’re shifting economic power beyond the one percent and into the hands of excellent founders, who are building products that serve more people, and are building companies and cultures that will inevitably be the future tech giants of the world,” she said.
Additionally, all LPs are provided with full skills-building programs around becoming a better angel investor, or becoming an actual entrepreneur or operator.
To learn more about the W Fund or to become a LP, visit wrule.vc.
