NEWPORT – With local venture capital already in short supply, Melissa Bowley, founder and CEO of Flourish Care, found herself facing a particularly steep task as she sought out capital for her startup, which provides pregnancy and early parenthood support services.
Bowley went into pitch meetings equipped with facts highlighting the dire state of reproductive health care in the United States, which posts the highest incidence of pregnancy and childbirth-related mortality rates among high-income countries. But that often wasn't enough to convince investors that Flourish Care provided needed services.
“I pitch to mostly men, and I did it for two years,” Bowley recalled. "But when I talked about maternal health, they would say, 'My wife is a mom, and she loves being a mom' ... Even when I would state the statistics, I couldn’t get male investors to believe these were problems that needed to be addressed."
With men owning most venture capital firms, Bowley had few other sources to turn to – and with women receiving just 2.3% of overall venture capital funding, according to gender equity nonprofit All Raise, she wasn't alone in the compound challenge of securing investments as a woman entrepreneur.
To assist women innovators in overcoming this gap, Bowley and Annette Tonti, executive director of RIHub, joined forces to lead the New England Female Founders League, an initiative of RIHub that provides networking, professional development and other support services for women entrepreneurs.
“There are roadblocks that women deal with in the investment world today, and it takes a network,” Tonti said. “When you’re going through these things, you need to talk to your network, to talk with other women.”
The group, established about two years ago, has steadily increased its audience and programming, regularly reaching around 200 people via email. Earlier this week, NEFF drew more than 200 attendees to the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport for a screening and panel discussion of “Show Her the Money,” a documentary by Ky Dickens highlighting the funding challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and the success they can reach with access to this capital.
“There’s a huge inequity out there, and the goal is to shift that,” Bowley said, with benefits for individual women entrepreneurs and overall economic success – According to the World Economic Forum, greater investments in women-led businesses could increase global GDP by $5 trillion.
The panel discussion that followed included Allison Byers, CEO & founder of Scroobius; La Keisha Landrum Pierre, managing partner at Emmeline Ventures; Melissa Sherman, CEO of MOBILion Systems, Inc.; Shruti Shah, partner at Symphonic Capital; and Tom Sperry, managing partner at Rogue Venture Partners and the Rogue Women Fund.
The event attracted attendees from throughout the region, Tonti said, including Boston and New York City, alongside a strong Ocean State showing.
“In Rhode Island, we have an energized group of women and men around this topic,” Tonti said. “They came together, over 200 strong in Newport ... and had a great night of learning and discovering.”
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
