In a powerful move for women in tech, ALIAVIA Ventures has launched a $13.5M fund designed to back female-founded startups in both the US and Australia. This fund isn’t just about providing financial backing; it’s about creating a lasting shift in the venture capital (VC) landscape by supporting women who are building innovative tech companies in the B2B and B2C sectors.
With female-led companies facing unique challenges in securing investment, this fund marks a significant step forward. But how did it come to be, and why is it so important? I sat down with Marisa Warren, one of the co-founders of ALIAVIA, to discuss the journey behind this game-changing initiative and how it could pave the way for the next generation of unicorns led by women.
Why ALIAVIA Ventures Was Created: A Personal Mission to Support Women Founders
Marisa Warren and her co-founder Kate Vale have decades of experience in the tech industry, with both women having worked at major companies like SAP, Microsoft, Spotify, and Google. This deep-rooted experience in corporate tech has shaped their vision for empowering female founders, especially in a sector where women often find themselves outnumbered and unsupported.
Despite their impressive careers, both Warren and Vale have had their fair share of challenges in the tech world, especially as women in leadership roles. They experienced firsthand how difficult it can be for women to find mentors who would support and uplift them rather than competing against them. This frustration became the driving force behind their mission to create a venture firm that would focus on mentorship, investment, and ultimately, empowerment for women entrepreneurs.
The Birth of ALIAVIA: A Response to the Gender Investment Gap
The idea for ALIAVIA Ventures wasn’t just born out of frustration—it was also born from opportunity. Back in 2015, while living in New York, Marisa Warren saw an opportunity to support female tech founders even before it became a popular cause. From this idea, ELEVACAO, a pre-accelerator program designed to help female founders in tech, was born.
ELEVACAO has since graduated 175 women founders, raised over $120 million, and seen three exits across both the US and Australia. But even with these accomplishments, Warren knew that the next big hurdle was getting funding for female-led startups, which continues to be a significant issue across both countries.
When COVID-19 hit, Warren saw the stark reality of what female founders were facing: access to venture capital was drying up. Even though many women founders were building exceptional companies, the funding they needed wasn’t coming in. It was in this moment of crisis that Warren and Vale decided to take matters into their own hands, launching ALIAVIA Ventures to address this gap head-on.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: Women Founders Are Undervalued
Despite the growing awareness of the gender investment gap, women founders are still at a severe disadvantage when it comes to raising capital. In the US, for example, just 1.9% of the $238.3 billion in venture capital allocated last year went to startups led by all-women teams. This is despite evidence that female-led tech companies offer a 35% higher ROI compared to their male-led counterparts.
In 2019, when funding for women founders was at its peak, only 2.7% of total capital went to female-led startups. To put that into perspective, $5 billion went to women founders in 2019—the same amount raised by WeWork that year.
This data doesn’t just point to a missed opportunity—it points to a systemic issue within venture capital. The problem, Warren explains, is not a lack of talent among women founders but a bias in the industry, where the vast majority of investors (about 95%) are white men who tend to invest in what they know: typically, male-led ventures.
ALIAVIA’s Mission: A Better Future for Women Founders
What sets ALIAVIA Ventures apart is not just its focus on female founders, but its commitment to driving real change within the VC ecosystem. Marisa Warren and Kate Vale are working to shift the way the industry approaches funding. They’ve recognized that investing in women founders is not only the right thing to do but also financially sound.
Warren believes that in order to see real change, VC firms need to make a commitment to investing in women—and this needs to be reflected in their investment mandates. At present, there is no other firm in Australia focused exclusively on backing pre-Series A female founders in the tech sector.
To further this goal, ALIAVIA’s fund is driven by quotas and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), holding both the venture capitalists and the limited partners (LPs) who provide the capital accountable. Warren and Vale understand that to make a real impact, they need to ensure that more VC firms adopt similar mandates to increase funding for women.
One of their anchor investors, Carol Schwartz, has described Warren and Vale as “pioneers” in the field, leading the way for equality in venture funding and helping to shift the power dynamics within the industry.
The Path Forward: Creating a New Generation of Unicorns
Warren and Vale are optimistic about the future. By focusing on female-founded pre-seed and seed-stage tech startups, they believe that ALIAVIA can help unlock the potential of unicorns led by women. They see this as the first step in what they hope will become a broader movement in the tech and venture capital industries.
The ALIAVIA Ventures Fund is just the beginning. Warren and Vale are committed to helping women thrive in business—not just by providing capital, but by creating a network of mentorship and support that helps women entrepreneurs overcome the unique barriers they face. Their goal is to ensure that women, who often face the highest hurdles in terms of raising funds, have the resources and mentorship they need to build world-changing companies.
Conclusion: The Future is Female-Led Tech
ALIAVIA Ventures’ $13.5M fund is a game-changer for the female founder community. By providing much-needed investment and support, it’s paving the way for a new era of female entrepreneurs who are building some of the most promising tech companies in the world.
If you’re a woman with a tech startup or considering launching one, the future has never looked brighter. With funds like ALIAVIA Ventures leading the charge, there’s a growing recognition that female founders are more than capable of creating the next generation of unicorns—they’re essential to the future of the tech industry.
