Investing in Women Entrepreneurs

In a special 4th of July weekend podcast, we spoke with Lori Wachs, Partner at Springboard Growth Capital.

Springboard focuses on providing capital to women entrepreneurs in the Series C stage and beyond.

The deal structure that Springboard offers to clients is quite interesting. Instead of one large private capital fund that invests across various growth capital and private market deals, Springboard investors choose to invest one deal at a time, even with modest amounts of capital.

Given many companies’ tendency to stay private longer, Springboard Growth Capital aims to help capture and fund business growth that used to occur in public markets.

Springboard is not shy about courting women clients as investors in these businesses.

The team at Springboard Growth Capital includes Co-Founder Kay Koplovitz, former Chairman & CEO of USA Networks, who was the first female network president in television history. Koplovitz has trained over 700 entrepreneurs to raise capital through involvement in Springboard Enterprises, and the team at Springboard Growth Capital leverages that network to source deals.

We spoke with Wachs about the dichotomy of business performance across the economy.

One of Springboard’s portfolio companies is Hint^® water, which is a direct consumer product but has an online-oriented business and subscription model that is performing well in today’s virtual consumption world.

However, on the other side is ClassPass, which recently raised over $300 million to fund global ambition and expansion plans to provide access to boutique workout studios. They saw 90% of their revenue evaporate within 10 days during the pandemic.

That type of pandemic risk will be increasingly top of mind for investors and may offer better terms for investors looking forward.

This was a very interesting conversation. You can listen to the full conversation below: