Women in VC: How Kathryn Cartini Took the Unconventional Path to Building a Women-Focused Impact Fund
Women in the venture capital world continue to lack the support, space, and attention they deserve. In the US alone, less than 6 percent of VC firms are led by women, according to Women in VC. In other countries, this number is smaller.
At The Conscious Investor, this hits hard. This publication is founded by a female VC and entirely run by women. But rather than dwell on the paltry numbers we choose to celebrate the immense talent that is changing the landscape of venture capital—and, in turn, the world-at-large. In this series, Women in VC, we highlight women at the helm of venture funds across the globe. Their words, efforts, and honest takes are fuel for us all to take part in bringing real equity and inclusion into the VC fold.
By Stacey Lindsay
When Kathryn Cartini was a new graduate of Syracuse University, she found herself in the thick of the newsroom. Cartini had taken the job as an assignment editor at a local Syracuse station. It was hectic: She was vetting information, assigning stories to reporters and photographers, and keeping producers and anchors informed. As Cartini describes it, the job was “a big project management experience under very tight deadlines.”
At the time, a career in news wasn’t in Cartini’s foresight. She had envisioned going to New York City to work in film or at SNL, “but 9-11 detoured those plans,” she says. So she stayed in the town of her alma mater—and “that experience was the jumping point” to discovering how well-suited she was for a bustling, start-up work environment. “There are constant upheavals,” says Cartini, “and you have to do it all and wear all of these different hats.”
Juggling different hats is a mandate for someone in media, which Cartini continued to be. After holding the assignment editor position for a decade, she left to pursue new media, an opportunity that called for the merger of her newsroom learnings with her scrappy fortitude and storytelling techniques. This unspooled into her founding Peacock Media, a boutique media business that creates succinct content for businesses to use across mediums. Cartini’s new business, and the growing demand for multimedia content, opened many paths. She moved to Boston and partnered with the marketing software generator, HubSpot, which was still a start-up at the time. “Being around all of the excitement, I just needed to get more involved,” she says.
Being around that hustle and bustle was the spark that ignited Cartini’s unorthodox path into angel investing. She started creating content for venture backed tech companies and investors. Armed with great wisdom, including experience in storytelling and working with burgeoning entrepreneurs, she wanted to be a part of building the next generation of impact-focused businesses. This passion was further ignited by her connection to Martin Babinec. The founder of Trinet, a Silicon Valley success story, Babinec had also launched the Syracuse-based non-profit Upstate Venture Connect, which connects entrepreneurs to resources. This intrigued Cartini. She got involved in Upstate Venture Fund. As the non-profit’s COO and CMO, helped initiate several angel funds, accelerators, competitions and entrepreneurial programs from the ground up, which resulted in the mentorship of hundreds of start-ups.
This desire to be in the mix, shepherding talent, is Cartini’s style, and it’s what is driving her newest endeavor, Chloe Capital. Women-owned, Chloe Capital represents “a new service-orientated” venture fund that invests in seed-stage, women-led businesses and offers educational tools for impact investing. Like Cartini, there is nothing ordinary about Chloe Capital or its original story. It came from sheer fortitude and creative thinking. Cartini had crossed paths with tech entrepreneur and investor Elisa Miller-Out, a “pioneer” who had been driving forward a changing the ecosystem for women in tech and start-ups, says Cartini. Their connection was kismet. “We were at an event when we overheard someone say, ‘I would love to invest in more women founders, but I just can't find them’” says Cartini. “And we were like: That is not the case!”
The two decided to launch Chloe Capital, along with a third co-founder, Erica O’Brian. Fueled by gumption, Cartini, Miller-Out and O’Brian reached out to some of the funds that have been investing in women and socially responsible entities.
“We asked them, are we bonkers? And they said, ‘yeah, you're bonkers, but we need more courageous leaders to join us if we’re ever going to move the needle!” The trio charged ahead, and in 2017 they launched their first program to invest in women.
One image from Chloe Capital’s early days stands out to Cartini. The firm had invited a group of women to make a small investment into a special purpose vehicle. One of the women entrepreneurs was Kim Gamez, the founder of Mi Padrino, an event-planning and crowd-gifting platform servicing the Hispanic community. Gamez had just given birth to her fifth child, Lucy, during the due diligence round. Eager to not miss out on Chloe Capital’s investing program, and a potential investment t, she brought her mother and newborn baby with her to the gatherings. “When we announced Kim as the recipient of the investment, she was breastfeeding Lucy,” says Cartini. “She threw the blanket over her and went up to the front of the room to accept the big silly check that we had back then. You could see Lucy’s little feet sticking out from under the blanket. We knew, at that moment, that there was so much more that we could and should and need to be doing to support underrepresented founders. .”
Today, the team at Chloe Capital is to “move mountains.” With a $175MM+ + investment portfolio of 13 women-founded companies, Chloe Capital has also delivered 10 educational programs around the country and a newly launched virtual impact investing course. It’s a lot, especially considering Chloe Capital was born only four years ago. “When you look back at the actual progress, you're like, wow, we’re really making an impact.”” reflects Cartini. “We moved mountains because we knew that there was a problem. We had the passion to try to solve the problem. And we either brought the expertise to the table, or we found other people who had done it before in the past, who were willing to offer us guidance to see us through.”
She continues: “We have taken to heart, every piece of advice, every piece of feedback. And we continue to look at market trends to assess , `What is going to put us in the best position to execute on our mission, which is to decrease the gender and diversity gap in entrepreneurship and venture capital?’”
Whatever energy and effort it takes, Cartini is willing to put it forth. By juggling all her skills, many that she still pulls from her early days in the chaotic newsroom, she won’t ever stop championing, investing in, and—ultimately—amplifying other women.
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