Lorine Pendleton
“Obviously, women don’t get the level of funding men do, but endless studies have shown that women-led companies actually outperform companies where it’s an all-male founding team. If you want to make money, why wouldn’t you invest in women? If you look at the VC firms, only 7 percent are women partners. VC firms are risk-averse, so they’re going to invest in people who look like themselves, which typically are white men. That’s the issue.”
How to do better: “I’m hopeful. Women are now realizing their power—their financial power, their social power, their human power, their capital. They’re now saying, ‘We’re going to actually pool our money. We want to help bring other women up.’ It’s going to take more women forming VC firms, more women partners.”
—Lorine Pendleton is a business development executive, angel investor and a chair of Tiger 21 New York. She is a member of Pipeline Angels—a network of female angel investors who are creating capital for women social entrepreneurs and collectively have invested in 40-plus companies—and she is an investment partner in Portfolia Funds, through which she has funded 14 companies. lorinependleton.com
