News

March 23, 2023

WEL Manitoba brings together a network of accredited women investors from across the province providing hands-on investment education and networking to its members and access to new capital for female founders at the pre-seed and seed stage on the Canadian prairies.

“We’ve been working over the past year to bring together the region’s first female fund that focuses on engaging and encouraging women to learn more about angel investing,” says Joelle Foster, co-founder of WEL Manitoba and Managing Partner, (MP). Joelle is the CEO of North Forge Technology Exchange, a technology incubator accelerator that also runs the largest publicly accessible fabrication lab in North America. “The success of the fund is due to the collaborative efforts taken by our four MPs who were able to bring these women together for our first capital raise in a region that is becoming nationally recognized as a growing tech hub.”

WEL Manitoba is part of WEL National – an organization founded in 2017 with a mission to get more women involved in angel investing. “In addition to Manitoba, WEL investment groups operate in Victoria, Vancouver, Silicon Valley, and an Atlantic Provinces fund made up of investors from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Newfoundland. “WEL Manitoba is an impressive group of accomplished accredited women investors and a new source of female led capital and expertise to support female founders who traditionally have been unable to access vital capital needed to launch successful companies,” Stephanie Andrew, Founding Partner, WEL.

Led by a team of Managing Partners; Joelle Foster, Sandy Foster, Rosalie Harms, and Priti Mehta-Shah, the group believes that female-founded businesses will generate strong returns, and by increasing access to early-stage capital in female-founded companies is a key opportunity to level the playing field.

About WEL:

The WEL investing model was created to address the chronic and systemic underrepresentation of women in early stage investing. By reducing the barriers to entry that have typically kept women out – gender bias, lack of previous investing experience, capital needed to get involved – our Learning On InvestmentTM (LOI) approach is designed to facilitate entry into this investment class. WEL consists of a powerful community of over 150 women investors from across the country managing a growing portfolio of investments which should reach about 40 company investments by the end of the year. Over 70% of WEL investments are in women-run and women-led businesses. WEL not-for-profit was created to support national fund operations with funding from the Government of Canada. For more information on how to participate in WEL please refer to our website at www.womensequitylab.com or contact info@womensquitylab.com.

March 7, 2023

WEL Toronto launched its second fund in February – bringing together 50 women investors from the GTA to pool their capital to invest in early stage Canadian businesses.

WEL Fund 2 follows the debut Toronto fund launched in 2021. WEL is an investing and learning platform where a group of 40-50 women can get access to early stage deal flow, and learn how to invest alongside other women and experienced investors.

“We’re thrilled to get our second fund up and running,” says Sally Morris, Managing Partner, WEL Toronto. “The response to our first WEL Toronto fund was extremely strong, and we are very happy to be able to bring 50 more women into our second capital raise.”

WEL Toronto is part of WEL National – an organization founded in 2017 with a mission to get more women involved in angel investing. “Women controlled capital can be a powerful force for change. Investment capital controlled by women continues to grow, and we’ve seen an incredible opportunity to bring women together to actively participate while providing essential financing to early stage companies.” says Stephanie Andrew, Founding Partner, WEL.

WEL Toronto has invested in tech-enabled startups from a cross section of industries ranging from environmental, medtech, beauty and the funeral industry. With growing momentum, access to more deals and a larger investment pool, WEL Toronto is poised to become a meaningful force in increasing diversity in the flow of private equity.

Our mission of ’more female investor representation now, equal representation someday’ is resonating across the country,” says Jane Tucker, Managing Partner, WEL Toronto. “In addition to Toronto, WEL has chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and funds launching in Manitoba, Silicon Valley, and an Atlantic Provinces group fund made up of investors from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI and Newfoundland.”

About WEL:

The WEL investing model was created to address the chronic and systemic underrepresentation of women in early stage investing. By reducing the barriers to entry that have typically kept women out – gender bias, lack of previous investing experience, capital needed to get involved – our Learning On InvestmentTM (LOI) approach is designed to facilitate entry into this investment class. Launched in 2017, WEL now consists of a powerful community of over 150 women investors from across the country managing a growing portfolio of investments which should reach about 40 company investments by the end of the year. Over 70% of WEL investments are in women-run and women-led businesses. WEL not-for-profit was created to support national fund operations with funding from the Government of Canada.

Victoria, British Columbia March 8^th, 2022

Women’s Equity Lab (“WEL”) is pleased to announce that after an extensive search, Glynnis Vaughan has joined the organization as the new National Program Manager. Glynnis will focus on leveraging opportunities to manage the rapid expansion of WEL Investment Groups across North America. Glynnis’ position was funded by a federal government grant awarded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.

In addition to the operational Investment Groups in Victoria, Vancouver and Okanagan, Toronto recently launched as well and is looking to make its first investment soon.

“WEL was created to address the chronic and systemic under-representation of women in early-stage investing,” says Jane Tucker, a GP with WEL Toronto. “And the reaction to our newly formed Toronto Investment Group (which now has a 50-person waiting list), has been very enthusiastic. We’re proud to celebrate the momentum behind WEL on International Women’s Day and can’t wait to see what happens when more and more women are helping to shape the future of our economy.”

With the addition of Toronto, more than 130 women are now active angel investors through WEL and are affecting change in the gender inequality in cap tables.

WEL expects new Investment Groups to open soon in Manitoba and Silicon Valley as well, the first US location.

This rapid growth could not have happened without our dedicated General Partners who lead each local Investment Group and the legal support of Osler, for which WEL is tremendously thankful.

About WEL

Our vision is a future with equal shareholder representation, because when women’s perspectives and insights inform more investment decisions, we all profit.

The first step is to facilitate the entry of women into the area of early-stage investing, as currently less than 24% of angel investors are female and are even less represented in venture capital markets. We offer a unique, collaborative pooled investment approach where women learn through pooling minimal risk capital and collaborating to source, qualify, evaluate, make investment decisions, and monitor investments together.

Today, WEL represents a powerful and growing network of over 130 women investors, with Investing Groups in Victoria, Vancouver, Okanagan, and Toronto and soon Manitoba and Silicon Valley. We have collectively invested in 18 different businesses so far, including personal health, agritech, e-commerce, green tech, SaaS, self-publishing and plant-based food products.

For more information on how to participate in WEL please refer to our website at www.womensequitylab.com or contact Glynnis Vaughan at 250-507-9067.

VICTORIA, British Columbia, July 14, 2021

Women’s Equity Lab (WEL), Canada’s first all-female angel fund is expanding across North America. WEL was first launched in Victoria in 2017 with the support of the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) and has recently completed the investment of its third round. The Vancouver chapter was launched in 2020 followed by the Okanagan in early 2021. New groups are currently setting-up in Toronto, Winnipeg and Silicon Valley. To support the roll-out, WEL has just finished a complete rebrand and launched a new website at www.womensequitylab.com to help businesses apply for funding and for investors to find a WEL fund in their region.

WEL is comprised of groups of diverse, successful women who share expertise, insights and perspectives to make smart investments in new businesses. Our approach is a fun and accessible way to learn from the experience of early angel investing, activate capital to advance our economy and further gender equality. Across regions WEL teams closely collaborate, network and share deal flow, education, expertise and resources to support our investees and our communities and syndicate deals with other angel groups and government funding agencies.

Winnipeg, Toronto and Silicon Valley and the second Vancouver fund are actively recruiting 25-30 investors each, who commit $5,500. Partners meet monthly and collectively develop an investment thesis, assess deal flow and make investment decisions. Each fund invests in from three to five deals over a one-year period.

WEL Founding Partner (Victoria WEL Fund), Stephanie Andrew, also co-founder of the Capital Investment Network and Partner in Cindicates, a Victoria-based VC fund, started WEL because women are significantly under-represented in venture investing.

“In British Columbia more than 80 women are now active WEL investors and over $1M has been invested to date. With new WEL groups actively recruiting investors in Toronto, Winnipeg and Silicon Valley, the valuable impact of women shareholders is soon to rise exponentially and will result in more diverse corporate teams and board, which has been proven to lead to better outcomes.”

NACO is Canada’s national angel capital industry association and represents 45 regional angel investment groups and 40 accelerators and incubators. Says CEO Claudio Rojas, “We are committed to increasing diversity within the angel investor ecosystem to ensure that innovative entrepreneurs have access to the capital and connections they need to build Canada’s future. We are pleased to support the expansion of the Women’s Equity Lab and applaud the incredible work they are doing to activate more women angel investors.”

Vancouver’s WEL fund was co-founded in 2020 by Irene Dorsman who is also CEO of Vancouver’s Angel Forum – one of Canada’s longest serving angel networks. “There are important initiatives to support women entrepreneurs, but it is equally important to create more female investors. Not only is this key to growing financial assets owned by women, it also ensures early stage companies benefit from a female perspective as they grow their business.”

The Okanagan WEL fund was launched this year and is the largest to date with 30 investors. The group, also known as Okanagan Women’s Mentoring and Angel Fund (WMAN), is focused on BC Interior ventures with one or more women on the management team and with women holding a significant equity interest.

WMAN co-founding partner Camille Saltman is a retired tech CEO who recently moved back to Canada from California. After launching a venture accelerator for The University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, and looking back on her own experience fundraising and mentoring ventures, she realized there is still a big gap still to be filled. “Women-led ventures, after mentoring, more than double their ability to land bank financing but struggle to get angel and venture funding. Male-led ventures have the opposite experience. Why? Bank financing requires solid metrics but recent studies show angel and venture funding is still based on many subjective measures that have no bearing on the quality of the deal.”

The Women’s Enterprise Centre (WEC), a non-profit organization devoted to helping BC women start, lead and grow their own businesses issued a 2021 report, The Path Forward: Advancing the funding journeys of women entrepreneurs and it showed that over 61% of women entrepreneurs do not see current funding models fit their needs. Jill Earthy, CEO of WEC, says, “WEL unlocks new capital from women leaders with diverse backgrounds to participate as investors, while at the same time filling an important gap in the financing path for women-led businesses and all entrepreneurs.”

For more information on how to participate in WEL please refer to our website at www.womensequitylab.com or contact Stephanie Andrew at 250-857-6369 or info@womensequitylab.com.