Cleo Capital raised a $3.5M scout fund specifically to back female investors who source and lead deals, with a scout network built from nontraditional channels like journalists and influencers rather than typical Sand Hill Road circles. The firm targets female founders at the "friend and family" gap—writing checks at the earliest stages for women who often lack wealthy personal networks—and in 2024 launched a fully remote cybersecurity accelerator backed directly by the VC fund to create a proprietary pipeline into security startups globally.