Women Making a Difference: Gale Wilkinson

Meet Gale Wilkinson, who has been working in venture capital for a decade and who is on a mission to get more women funded and involved in venture capital. She launched VITALIZE Angels to allow both accredited and non-accredited investors participate in an effort to diversify the VC world. 

Tell us about VITALIZE and why you started it?

Today VITALIZE is both a fund investing at the seed stage and also an angel network that invests at the pre-seed stage. We’re focused on work technology, and our angel group has more than 450 people, with a new cohort of 10 to 20 starting each month. We want to increase access to the asset class to help people get a seat at the table. We have a diverse group with 70 percent underrepresentation, including women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+. 

How did you build that group and that representation?

The numbers are unfortunately getting worse in terms of percentage of dollars going to underrepresented founders. We’re leaving out a huge group of really strong founders and fund managers because they don’t come from the networks that are historically thought to be the best. Quite frankly, this is a really bad business decision as we are leaving money on the table. Today, less than two percent of venture dollars are managed by women (and remember, women are 50% of the population, so it’s unfathomable that we are at such a low number). To truly make a difference, I believe we have to throw grenades on our existing system and try and figure out ways of getting new pockets of capital to underrepresented VCs and founders.

What are the impacts of expanding the reach to a more diverse population?

I always come back to it being a good business decision, because so much data shows diversity juices returns. It’s also important for wealth generation because when you diversify who is at the table, you diversify opportunities to create wealth. That is a huge impact opportunity. This isn’t a woman’s issue—we need the support of everyone, we need men to be smart and think differently and recognize this blind spot, because the opportunities are huge. 

We hear so much about women-led and started funds, so why do you think there is still such a disconnect?

The number of women-led funds has increased dramatically in the last five years, however, they’re all small. Unfortunately there is a fallacy that it’s gotten easier for women, without recognizing that these initiatives have, comparatively, much less money. We're undercapitalized for underrepresented people both at the founder level and the emerging manager level. To put it into perspective, there are literally thousands of emerging, diverse managers raising funds today. While there are pockets of “diversity dollar” capital available, there are way too many qualified fund managers for the two to five investment spots each new pocket of capital has per year. This means many of us are left on the sidelines trying to scrape together tiny funds, and it doesn’t matter someone’s track record or approach, if the existing system of limited partners believes they do not fit into the “right networks” that have historically returned their capital. Whenever I meet with institutional limited partners, I let them know that whoever can figure out how to tip that scale and write billions (yes I said BILLIONS) of dollars worth of small checks each year into emerging, diverse fund managers is going to make a lot of money. It is a huge opportunity as these small funds with scrappy managers who have unique access to differentiated markets are going to find the majority of alpha in the VC market over the next decade. 

How else do you think we can start to move that needle, and tip those scales?

We need women to open their wallets, to become both angels for startups and limited partners in funds. I am certain that once this happens at scale, everything shifts. We need women to understand that they are smart enough, insightful enough and powerful enough to do what their male peers are doing, investing again and again and again. If you are a woman making over $200K per year and are not investing 10% of your portfolio into startups and funds, I would stop and ask yourself why. It’s typically due to fear, and also that wealth managers are gatekeepers as women are more likely than men to listen to their advice (and their advice will always be to keep money with them, which is how they make their money!) I think the right place for most accredited women to start investing is small funds, or direct deals as part of an angel group. I really want to encourage women to start investing, even small amounts, and learn that they actually are good investors and can generate wealth just like the men do.