Welcome to the inaugural issue of the HERmesa Community Newsletter!
We will be writing monthly about early stage investing (pre/seed stage) as women angel investors in some of the best women led startups in the UK (& occasionally in Europe and the US too).
The HERmesa Angel Network
Does the world really need another newsletter about investing?!? We thought long and hard about this question, before launching the HERmesa newsletter. As female funders and founders who invest together via the HERmesa Angel Syndicate we believe we represent a unique voice in the field of early stage investing.
HERmesa was founded by Marla Shapiro, a media-tech startup veteran in early 2020, with 5 aspiring angels, all entrepreneurs as well.
HERmesa is dedicated to achieving two, interrelated goals:
To increase the number of women angel investors up from their current representation as 14% of all angels
To increase the amount of capital going to women (co)founded startups up from current levels of 11% (which breaks down to 10% for mixed gender teams and a pathetic 1% for all female founding teams)
It took a little while for the HERmesa angel syndicate to start investing (we were a bit busy in early 2020 dealing with a global pandemic…!) but since we wrote our first cheque in September 2020, we’ve closed 22 rounds of financing in 2 years:
19 unique companies at pre/seed/Series A stage
3 follow on rounds
And all in women-led ventures (and when we say women led, we mean it! 17 of the 19 companies have women CEOs and all women hold significant equity and decision making roles in the business).
And we’ve done this with a hugely diverse, value-add network of operators turned angels:
130 syndicate members…and continuing to grow weekly
84% of our investors are entrepreneurs
82% of the membership are women
25% identify as non-white and represent 31 nationalities, coming from the UK, Europe, South/East Asia and North and South America
And 58% had never previously angel invested before joining HERmesa.
Why does it matter that women angel invest / we invest in women founders?
Angel investing is about making money. And, quite simply, all of the data supports the contention that you make more money investing in women founders and when you have more women as co-investors.
At HERmesa, we call this the “Diversity Dividend”. You can read more about this here, including links to the underlying academic studies (we do love to back up our arguments with robust data!)
The second reason that women need a seat at the table as funders and founders is because the world is - quite literally - on fire.
We face tremendous challenges to our democracy, our climate, our health. Is it really the case that only men can pick the ‘best’ startups to solve these problems / that only men can build companies to solve the world’s toughest problems? We sure don’t think so! And if you share this view, you are going to enjoy reading the HERmesa Community Newsletter
The HERmesa Approach
We were recently invited to speak on a panel of women angel investors and were asked “What is HERmesa’s investing super-power?” Great question! We believe it is the unique value that flows from our network of operators & entrepreneurs:
Deal screening and due diligence is performed by operators turned angels who are sector and functional experts. These angels are best placed to select startups that are going to be future winners in their space.
We have worked very hard to build a collaborative culture that welcomes non-traditional investors and offers them a seat at our table to contribute their unique insights. Through this, we bring very experienced women into angel investing and they add high-value support, above and beyond their capital;
And this network of operators turned angel investors drives a fantastic pipeline of the *top* women founders who actively want HERmesa on their cap tables. There are a lot of reasons why women founders don’t get investment…but a lack of high quality women-led startups is NOT the reason.
This newsletter will shine a light on some of the great women investors and founders in the HERmesa community. We will share tips on how to both get started and keep improving as an angel investor. And we will be explaining why we have chosen to invest in particular companies; where we’ve gotten it right…as well as wrong.
We are so pleased that you are here to join us on this journey. Welcome to HERmesa.
Keen to start learning? Join us on 22 November 5.30pm-6.45pm via zoom for the next event in our ongoing angel education series: “Angel Investing in Legal Tech Startups”