The leading program for incubating women-led startups and venture funds in the Nordics, Time to Raise merges with Full Potential founded by Mei Wen and Vincent Weir, to try to fill the gender funding gap. Thanks to this merge, women can get funding for their innovative ideas which may lead to change numbers in the next report.
According to Unconventional Venture’s Startup Funding Report 2021, women are still having difficulties in male-dominated businesses even though it can be seen a slight increase in investing in female-founded companies. It shows that 92%of venture capital feeds all-male founding teams in the Nordic region which BVCA’s Diversity & Inclusion Report 2021 points out that the ultimate decision comes from male-dominated actors.
Time to Raise merges with Full Potential to create a full-stack fundraising ecosystem for women
An ecosystem-wide opportunity
From climate action to income equality, today’s biggest opportunities require coordinated approaches at the ecosystem level. The gender funding gap offers another case in point.
Research suggests that we can increase material prosperity and society-evolving impact if we can find a way to direct more venture capital to female-founded companies. Yet the gender funding gap remains. Even in progressive geographies like the Nordics, 92% of venture capital still goes to all-male founding teams.
The cause sits higher up in the ecosystem, where 85% of Europe’s VC decision-makers are male. Research supports the interconnected nature of these observations: female investors consistently back more female founders across sectors and stages. To unlock venture capital’s latent opportunity, we need a coordinated approach that supports more female-founded startups and investment funds at the same time.
Full-stack fundraising
Today, Think Full Potential AB (Full Potential) is merging with Time to Raise Capital (Time to Raise) to create a full-stack fundraising ecosystem supporting female startup founders and investors in their fundraising. As a result of the agreement, Time to Raise founder Peggy Poon will join Full Potential founders Mei Wen and Vincent Weir on the board of Full Potential.
Since its founding in 2021, Time to Raise has been on a mission to empower Nordic women through a fundraising-focused startup accelerator. That female, funds-centric mission is shared by Full Potential, the Stockholm-based investor platform with the vision to invest in 100,000 world-changing companies by incubating 1,000 women-led venture capital funds.
Full Potential was founded in 2021 by Mei Wen and Vincent Weir, two McKinsey alumni and partners at Invenio Growth, the Stockholm-based venture incubator. Currently an event-hosting platform built around a network of 400+ venture capital investors and allocators, Full Potential is best known for organizing the “Inclusion through Investing Day” event series in London, Stockholm and Helsinki. Full Potential’s stated goal is to create Europe’s first fund-of-funds dedicated to incubating emerging female VCs. Going forward, Full Potential and Time to Raise will cooperate under the new banner of Time to Raise +Investors.
“Time to Raise has a lot to offer the Full Potential platform,” says Full Potential co-founder, Mei Wen. “We aim, with the help of partners, to create a best-in-class VC accelerator that will help investors from around Europe raise their first fund. Time to Raise is certainly the best-in-class accelerator devoted to female startup fundraising–and we are excited to build on that platform by extending the same opportunities to emerging female managers through Time to Raise +Investors.”
Post-merger plans
Time to Raise +Investors’ goal is to launch Europe’s first fund-of-funds focused on emerging female solo GPs. As step one, the team is launching a community for investors who aim to start their own venture capital fund. Step two is to accelerate the most qualified women in this community through their first fundraising process. In step three, the organization will launch a female-focused fund-of-funds devoted to backing first-time VC managers.
“We’re starting with a Europe-wide community rooted in the Nordic values of equality and entrepreneurship,” says Full Potential co-founder, Vincent Weir. “Here in the Nordics, we see the daily tension between a society that wants to empower women and a world that hasn’t always been built to make that empowerment possible.
The goal of Time to Raise +Investors is to align a societal desire for equality with sustainable, corporate incentives. The fund-of-funds model gives us a sustainable base from which to pursue this untapped opportunity at the highest levels of capitalism.”
At the heart of the +Investors project is a belief that more venture capital is good for the world. Peer-reviewed research suggests that venture-backed companies create more than twice the number of jobs and quality-adjusted patents as compared to non-venture backed companies. Further research suggests that startups with at least one female founder are 73% more likely to be considered impact companies than startups founded by all men, with impact companies defined as those that generate positive social or environmental impact from their core business in a way that can be linked to the SDGs.
“Ultimately, the logic behind the merger can be summed up in a single sentence,” says Peggy Poon, founder of Time to Raise. “More female investors means more VC investing and more funding to female founders, both of which are good for the world.”
