Funds backing female founders

Early-stage investor backing game-changing, tech-enabled companies founded by women.

The Helm

Climate

Pre-Seed - Series A

$500K

Led by consumer-brand operator Susan Lyne and born of #BUILTBYGIRLS, they use a proprietary Polyculture thesis and data from 100+ female-led companies to guide founders targeting polycultural markets.

BBG Ventures

Pre-Seed - Seed

$500K - $1M

Hands-on husband-and-wife Latinx- and women-founded VC focused on fintech, AI, and cybersecurity, leveraging operator experience and immigrant perspectives to help founders with go-to-market strategy and AI risk guidance.

Mendoza Ventures

Cybersecurity

Pre-Seed - Series B+

$500K - $5M

Replaces friends & family rounds with a two-minute form (no deck, no warm intro), using cold outreach and a 100+ operator network that sources deals and opens customer/investor doors.

January Ventures

Pre-Seed - Seed

$250K - $750K

Seed/early-stage AI-native business software investor making ~7 new investments yearly, originated the Diversity Rider to include underrepresented investors, and pursues fewer-bets, deeper relationships; 60% reach Series B/C.

Act One Ventures

Pre-Seed - Seed

$300K - $1M

Microfund making $100K–$500K first checks into women-led tech companies focused on lifelong learning (early childhood to adult career), offering 25+ years edtech experience and access to educators, buyers, co-investors.

Copper Wire Ventures

Education

Future of Work

Pre-Seed - Seed

$50K - $150K

Early-stage investor in advanced tech and healthcare that funds companies with at least one female founder, focusing on STEM startups with female executives.

Plum Alley Investments

Biotech

Deeptech / Hardware

Climate

Series A

$750K - $3M

Salt Lake City–based fund backing founders addressing underserved populations across 49 states, using a pedigree-penalizing scorecard and a 6+ month startup academy of specialist coaches to reach overlooked geographies.

Beta Boom

Future of Work

Pre-Seed - Seed

$150K - $350K

Views underfunding of women and founders of color as a pricing inefficiency, sourcing deals via Serena Williams' sports, entertainment and communities-of-color networks while leveraging her 15+ years' experience and brand.

Serena Ventures

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $500K

Seed–Series B software investor leveraging a 1,000+ operator network that over-indexes women and minority founders, using operator-heavy advisors (David Kirk, Robin Bordoli) to source and vet teams.

Authentic Ventures

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $1M

Built and led by Black women operators, this VC invests exclusively in women-of-color–led businesses and leverages the founders' media backgrounds for public advocacy and DEI-focused visibility.

Fearless Fund

Food & Ag

Pre-Seed - Series A

$250K - $500K

Led by Tricia Black (Facebook’s first VP of Sales, 7th employee), focused on commerce, care and connectivity, runs an Investor Fellows program and targets founders who build growth flywheels.

Amplifyher Ventures

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $300K

Millennial-led VC spanning the U.S. and Asia, committed to female and diverse founders, leveraging a global community pipeline and media-driven content to source, promote, and educate underrepresented entrepreneurs.

SoGal Ventures

Pre-Seed - Series A

$50K - $500K

Invests in non-obvious founders with deep founder‑market fit—over 85% led by women or underrepresented minorities—offering leadout-style protection and early, broad operator support from Apple, Stripe, Nvidia.

Leadout Capital

Pre-Seed - Seed

$250K - $1.5M

Early-stage investor specializing in companies founded by historically overlooked founders.

Overlooked Ventures

Unknown

$150K - $250K

Early-stage fund (~$10M cap) from a 25,000+ member women's leadership movement, enabling many first-time women and women-of-color LPs and leveraging LPs for sourcing and subject-matter expertise.

How Women Invest

Biotech

Seed

$50K - $200K

Invests at the earliest stages in mission-critical infrastructure for care, housing, work and community, offering access to 100+ operator and family-office co-investor network plus policy partnerships to shape regulation.

Springbank Collective

Future of Work

Pre-Seed - Series A

$500K - $1.5M

Corporate venture arm giving founders direct access to 360+ Hearst operating businesses for distribution, plus a 220+ women-executive Scout network that advises during diligence and as operating advisors.

HearstLab

Enterprise

Seed - Series A

$500K

Born from a nationwide Female Founders Alliance community, the firm uses that proprietary deal‑flow network to surface underestimated founders and offers unusual operational transparency and bias mitigation.

Graham & Walker

Pre-Seed - Seed

$25K - $400K

Early-stage investor specializing in female-founded consumer technology companies.

Halogen Ventures

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $1M

Early-stage investor in female-founded tech startups, backing nontraditional founders and offering a visible founder-centric media and events platform (podcasts, CEO Summits, reports) and proven exits.

Female Founders Fund

Pre-Seed - Series A

$500K - $1M

Blended nonprofit-for-profit fund converting catalytic grants into discounted SAFE notes and patient equity for women-of-color-led startups; reviews 100% of applications with guaranteed decisions and targets Mid‑Atlantic (excl. NY).

Phirst Market Ventures

Pre-Seed - Seed

$10K - $250K

Leads seed rounds for women founders in underserved geographies and non‑traditional profiles, focused on fintech, e‑commerce and care‑tech, run by three non‑Silicon Valley women with systematic impact measurement.

The Artemis Fund

Retail Tech

Seed

$1.5M

Focuses on ambitious female founders who show the X Factor: the insight and drive to build the next billion-dollar company.

XFactor Ventures

Deeptech / Hardware

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $200K

Targets women-led XR and AI startups in healthcare, education, and workplace training, leveraging a community-built accelerator and data-driven pipeline that validates founders' lived-experience advantages.

WXR Fund

Gaming / VR

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $1M

Fund treating investment in female founders as a contrarian alpha thesis, builds high-net-worth-woman check-writer networks, serves as LP in 25+ women-led emerging funds, and teaches women to become investors.

GingerBread Capital

Pre-Seed - Series A

$100K - $10M

Early-stage investor exclusively backing companies led by women, combining angel members and managed funds while offering investor education, hands-on operational support, network access and follow-on capital assistance.

Golden Seeds

Enterprise