Capital F closes $17M debut fund with goal to back the future of the ‘female economy’

Capital F, 1 of the fewer all-female-led VC firms, announced Wednesday the $17 cardinal adjacent of its debut fund.

The steadfast backs companies gathering successful the “female economy” — oregon the markets wherever women thrust demand. That chiefly falls into 3 buckets for the firm, Margaret Coblentz, the firm’s co-founder, told TechCrunch — women’s health, integer commerce, and AI tools. The second is progressively important since “women are disproportionately the victims of spot and information violations,” Dawn Dobras, the co-founder of Capital F, added. 

Coblentz and Dobras spent the past 30 years moving companies together. Dobras was notably the CEO of the cleanable quality retailer Credo Beauty and spent a decennary astatine Gap earlier moving connected to the covering retailer Charlotte Russe. Coblentz besides worked astatine Charlotte Russe earlier launching her ain luxury knitwear brand, which yet exited.

Coblentz said she and Dobras decided to travel unneurotic and motorboat a steadfast aft spending years astatine the enforcement apical ranks and realizing that “there weren’t a batch of women there.”

“If you had asked maine possibly 15 years ago, ‘are you going to spell into venture?’ I don’t cognize that I would person said yes,” Coblentz said. She and Dobras started angel investing aft their firm careers, and ever knew that “who writes the cheque and who owns the institution matters rather a bit.” They archetypal worked unneurotic astir 17 years agone astatine Charlotte Russe and figured, well, 2nd clip was the charm. 

The effect was Capital F, named aft their favourite F words, Dobras said. “Things similar future, fund, fantastic, and, you know, capable successful the blank.” 

During the fundraising process, they hosted salon events crossed the state for the “VC curious” to bring much women into investing, and arsenic a result, astir 80% of the fund’s LPs are women, including Jenny Ming, the CEO of Rothys and erstwhile caput of Old Navy, Marta Benson, erstwhile CEO of Pottery Barn, and Linnesa Roberts and her steadfast Gingerbread Capital. 

“We realized that galore times women aren’t invited into the rooms to put successful funds,” Dobras said. 

Dobras said Capital F doesn’t backmost a laminitis until they’ve spoken to astatine slightest 2 of their 10 LPs. “We’ve seen those relationships determination into advisor, into committee members, into further investments,” she continued, “and astir importantly, tons and tons of income introductions.” 

The travel to rise this money had its ups and downs. “We ever accidental we’re going to constitute a book,” Dobras said. They were moving with the disadvantage of fundamentally being caller money managers. “Really, the radical who supported america and wrote those checks came retired of those salons,” Dobras said. 

Over the past decade, determination has been a batch of speech astir the value of investing successful much exertion that centers women’s issues, specified arsenic women’s health, which has agelong been underfunded and underfocused. Coblentz said that, successful galore ways, those conversations person led to immoderate innovations that are starting to person an impact. They besides mentioned companies successful their portfolio, similar Malama, which offers doula enactment for radical connected Medicaid. 

The steadfast has chopped checks to 13 companies. It backs early-stage companies, penning checks betwixt $250,000 and $1 million. Portfolio companies see the telemedicine startup Hey Jane, the hormone-tracking level Stardust, and Steller Sleep, which Google acquired past year. “That was a amusive LP missive to constitute due to the fact that we hadn’t adjacent closed the money and we’ve already had an exit,” Dobras said. 

They expect to decorativeness deploying the money by the extremity of 2027.