Fundraising
Chief
Chief , the private network built to drive more women into positions of power and keep them there, today announced the close of a $22 million Series A investment round. The new investment was co-led by General Catalyst and Inspired Capital. Ken Chenault, chairman and a managing director of General Catalyst, and Alexa von Tobel, founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital, will join the board of directors.
Since its recent launch in January, Chief’s membership has grown to more than 700 of the most formidable women executives in New York, representing more than 500 companies. The majority of members are sponsored by their companies to support leadership development, including HBO, Walmart, LVMH, Sotheby’s, JetBlue, Mastercard, Johnson & Johnson, IDEO, Hulu, SoulCycle, PepsiCo, Verizon, Omnicom, Chobani, UNICEF, Instagram and Google. Chief also has a growing waitlist of thousands of women from across the country. The new investment will provide Chief with resources to advance its digital platform and pursue rapid geographic expansion to meet consumer demand.
Acquisition
SheWorx
Republic, the leading equity crowdfunding platform, announced today the acquisition of SheWorx, the prominent global platform and event series empowering 20,000+ female entrepreneurs to build and scale successful companies. The unprecedented partnership will allow female entrepreneurs to not only access SheWorx’s internationally recognized events, but also receive all of Republic’s platform benefits, including access to equity crowdfunding and their VC arm, Republic Labs.
While women receive less than 2.2 percent of VC funding, women actually outperform men by 30 percent in crowdfunding, largely due to its community-oriented nature and the ability for non-accredited investors to invest as little as $10. Republic focuses on funding underrepresented founders with 40percent of all investments on Republic having gone towards female founded startups. Republic’s crowdfunding investor base has funneled over $17M into 100+ startups while their institutional/accredited investor base has deployed $150M+ since 2018.
Founder Lisa Wang will remain an advisor to Republic and will also be launching her new venture in the fall. Lisa explains, “This acquisition is a powerful way to usher in the future of funding and a new wave of inclusive and socially minded leadership. You can’t create change by following old ways of doing things and success should not center around a small group of homogenous venture capitalists.”
Launches
New Edtech Accelerator
After a successful year collaborating with LearnLaunch as an investor, ETS is leveraging lessons learned and $2 million in investment capital to support education start-ups through a sponsored accelerator.
The ETS Accelerate program is accepting applications for its first cohort through July 10, 2019. Startups interested in participating can learn more on LearnLaunch Accelerator’s website and submit applications by visiting F6S .
The new accelerator will be themed-based, providing focused resources and value. These themes focus on critical issues in education and allow for focused programming and resources from ETS and LearnLaunch. Companies applying to this first cohort should be addressing “Skills for a New Economy,” “English Language Learning” or both.
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