Our thesis
Who gets funded follows who gets seen.
Capital and careers move through people who vouch for you. Women get fewer of those people, so we put 100 of them in one room and give each a recorded story to carry forward.
- of US venture capital went to all female founding teams in 2025
- ~1%
- new US unicorns in 2025 had an all female founding team
- 0 of 124
- revenue per dollar invested: women founded vs men founded startups
- 78¢ vs 31¢
- female VC partners are twice as likely to back a woman founder
- 2x
Sources: PitchBook, US All In (March 2026); BCG and MassChallenge (2018); PitchBook and All Raise (2019)
Keynote speakers
Voices that open doors
Opening · 10:30 AM
Founding General Partner, Emmeline Ventures · GCWC
Naseem co-founded Emmeline Ventures, a seed-stage fund backing female founded startups that help women manage their health, build their wealth and live in a cleaner, safer world. She hosts The Capital Flex, the podcast putting founders' real fundraising stories on the record, winner of two 2026 Signal Awards. Formerly a Partner at BCG Digital Ventures.
Listen to The Capital Flex → (opens in a new tab)
Keynote · 1:00 PM
U.S. Department of State · Venture Partner
“Lipstick Factor”
Cheryl has spent 30+ years welcoming companies to the US market, advising on startup and ecosystem growth across 83 countries and 65 industries. Based in San Francisco, she gives keynotes and workshops, serves on boards, and mentors founders at the UC Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp.
More talk titles and the closing keynote to be announced.
Featured panel · 1:30 PM
Changing the Face of Innovation
Navigating the innovation landscape as women
- Recognize the contributions women make to innovation, including the accomplishments and perspectives that don't get enough attention.
- Build relationships across industries and career stages that last well beyond the day.
- Name the barriers to advancement, with candid lessons on what helped each panelist move forward and what still needs to change.
- Celebrate achievement alongside the human story behind it: resilience, creativity, joy, and success that goes beyond titles, funding or exits.
- Open more paths into innovation as investors, advisors, founders and leaders, and connect women with the people who can help them start.
Moderator
Product leader, investor and advisor
Holly launched one of Roche's first commercial Software as a Medical Device products as Director of Product at Genentech, taking it through FDA registration and into three clinical trials. Before that she led product for zSpace's award winning AR/VR learning platform. She sits on the How Women Lead Silicon Valley executive board, led San Francisco programming for the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association (Marie Curie Award 2025), and serves on the Funding Breakthrough Lab leadership team.
Panelist
VP of Product Management, SAP Business AI
Natalie leads SAP's Joule for Consultants, taking a generative AI product from concept to general availability in under a year. Before SAP she was Head of Data Science and AI for Google Devices and Services, where her team launched Google Home's first generative AI feature, and she led AI and data science teams at Intuit and LinkedIn. She holds a PhD and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford.
More panelists to be announced.
