Solo capitalist Monique Woodard’s fund Cake Ventures is seeking to spend money on corporations targeted on customers mirrored in her concept of “demographic change.”
Brendan Mainini
The Black founder-turned-investor will write seed and pre-seed checks, backed by traders together with Financial institution of America and billionaire Melinda French Gates.
In March 2021, Monique Woodard closed a part of the primary fund for her new enterprise capital agency, Cake Ventures, and set to work. Many companies level to technological modifications because the north star for his or her portfolios; a smaller however rising quantity deal with underrepresented founders who can get ignored by a few of Silicon Valley’s conventional examine writers.
Woodard, a veteran of startups and VC for 20 years, was extra inquisitive about new companies driving demographic change in a handful of very particular areas 3 complementary “layers” of a cake: our getting old and longevity-minded inhabitants; the elevated incomes energy of ladies in society; and the shift to “majority-minority,” as Woodard put it, a “new majority” of early tech adopters coming from Asian, Black and Latino backgrounds.
Startups that match such a thesis, based on Woodard, would cater to buyer bases that mirrored such layers. Take Rares, a social investing website enabling fractional possession of collectives like sneakers, which embraces Black, Latin and Asian cultural influences; or Most Days, an app for setting wholesome routines in areas like sleep and despair, that’s principally utilized by ladies.
“It’s the lens via which I view corporations,” Woodard advised Forbes – and a thesis, she claimed, that didn’t fairly match an current agency. “Even corporations that don’t ‘seem like’ demographic change corporations on the floor have a layer of this beneath the hood.”
Now, after holding Cake Ventures’ remaining shut in November, the San Francisco-based Woodard is saying her first fund. A $17 million car, the fund will deal with pre-seed and seed investments, focusing on a ballpark $500,000 examine. Woodard serves as founding accomplice and managing director of the agency however plans to rent a enterprise accomplice and junior funding employees later this yr.
Cake will look to make about 25 investments general from its fund; Woodard has made 12 to this point. The portfolio already contains corporations like Rares and Most Days, but in addition coaching startup Vibrant, family payments tracker Gerald, incapacity and neuro-divergence assist enterprise Joshin, amongst others. Regardless of such standing not being a prerequisite for funding, about 40% of its investments up to now are led by ladies founders, Woodard stated, and 40% by founders who establish as Black – a pure consequence, Woodard added, of “altering who sits on the investor aspect of the desk.”
Backing the brand new fund are restricted companions together with Financial institution of America, Cendana Ventures, Foundry Group, Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Plexo Capital and Screendoor. (Woodard stated that greater than 25% of LP {dollars} dedicated got here from feminine traders.) At Pivotal, the funding arm of billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates, investments director Erin Harkless Moore stated Woodard impressed whereas serving as an adviser and mentor to a TechStars accelerator targeted on longevity that Pivotal co-sponsored.
“So many extra funds on the market now are specializing in ‘range,’ or various founders, or various demographics,” Harkless Moore stated. “The place Monique is differentiated is that she’s going a layer deeper with the depth of her analysis and taking a look at the kind of services and tech that these shoppers want.” Woodard wrote a report on getting old referred to as ‘Grey New World’ in 2020, Harkless Moore famous, that demonstrated her fascinated with the ramifications of an getting old populace. That led to an funding in Assured, which is wanting to make use of know-how to revamp end-of-life care.
Regardless of such assist, Woodard stated that elevating Cake Ventures’ first fund was a difficult course of, regardless of a profession that has included constructing and promoting an advert community, launching a cell purchasing startup, and stints as a Enterprise Accomplice at 500 Startups, a Enterprise Scout at Lightspeed Enterprise Companions and an ongoing advising function with SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund’s Emerge startup accelerator.
Woodard deliberate to boost $20 million initially; she finally selected to shut the fund and transfer ahead with much less. “I’ve stated earlier than that elevating a fund is doing enterprise capital on onerous mode. And elevating a fund as a girl is like crawling via glass and elevating a fund as a black lady is like crawling via glass with no garments on, after which they pour fireplace ants throughout you,” she stated. “So, it was at all times going to be onerous.”
For startups additionally discovering the present funding surroundings difficult, Woodard stated she hadn’t seen a significant slowdown in entrepreneurs launching new companies at her early-stage vantage level. The valuations at which traders worth such startups have continued to drop, nonetheless, she stated.
And whereas many eyes in enterprise are at the moment turned towards synthetic intelligence and generative AI apps (as maybe they did for crypto and web3 earlier than it), Woodard stated she’s taking part in a unique recreation. “A number of these applied sciences are essential and nice – defining applied sciences,” she stated. “However I believe what persons are forgetting, frankly, are the individuals.” The person base, she added, for such merchandise is shifting. Ignore that, and you would find yourself constructing for an empty room.
