The W Fund
New York, NY, United States
Overview
Our fund is singularly focused on investing in traditionally underfunded founders - women and other underrepresented innovators - and our team has extensive experience in finding incredible opportunities in startups with this profile. We invest primarily in Seed and Series A companies being built by traditionally underfunded founders. At least 70% of our investments will be in women-led startups. Of that 70%, at least half will go to women who also come from another group traditionally underrepresented in the tech startup space. The remaining 30% must have one of more of the following characteristics: - Founder from any traditionally underrepresented group, such as race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+, socioeconomic background, nationality, age, or location. - Solution focused on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion. - Solution focused on serving traditionally underserved customer groups. We care about profitability over hockey sticks, healthy growth over stacked venture rounds, and don’t rely on a small handful of our portfolio companies to contribute to positive fund performance. We look for technology founders who have a confident path to profits, are excited about the contributions our investment team, our advisors, our LPs and our network could have on their startup, are 100% committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, and care about the well-being of themselves and their team. After all, people are truly the biggest asset a growing company can have. We invest in technology companies that are ethically-forward and are working to make the world better – whether it be by providing more access (that’s a big word for us), creating solutions for underserved markets, promoting the positive use of data, or what have you.
- Total investments
- 3
- Lead investments
- 0
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 7
Investment portfolio
- Curastory
Participated · Seed · Nov 2021
Curastory provides tools and services that let content creators, individuals, and small media companies create, edit, distribute, and monetize video content. The product includes low-cost, high-quality camera, lighting, and microphone equipment for rent or purchase, free editing software, a music library, and distribution to Instagram TV, YouTube, and Facebook. It also offers advertiser matching (brands submit budgets and targeting or scripts) and tracking metrics to connect brands like Beyond Meat and StockX with relevant creators. The team built an MVP starting August 2020, launched in February 2021, and was generating revenue by March 2021. Curastory has expanded functionality to automate brand–creator matching and plans to add beauty and culinary content next, followed by business verticals in the coming months. The company emerged from Techstars Sports and is led by founder and CEO Tiffany Kelly.
- Shiru
Participated · Series A · Oct 2021
Shiru operates ProteinDiscovery.ai, an AI-driven ingredient discovery platform that hosts a database of 33 million natural molecules from plants and microbes and connects corporate partners to novel, high-performance ingredients. The platform is designed to shorten R&D timelines, reduce development costs, and accelerate time to market for flavor, skincare, agricultural, and advanced-materials applications. Shiru has commercial partnerships with companies such as Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition and Griffith Foods and has launched patented products including OleoPro™ and its active protein, uPro™. The company says it powers discovery across multiple molecular classes and plans to expand its ingredient portfolio and commercial offerings beyond proteins. Shiru is based in Berkeley, California, and is led by Founder and CEO Dr. Jasmin Hume. As of the announced round, the company has raised a total of $36 million. Shiru, founded in 2019 by Dr. Jasmin Hume, develops plant-based ingredients using precision fermentation to replicate the taste, texture and functionality of animal-derived proteins. The company offers a catalog of six colorless, flavorless ingredients that can be added to baked goods, sauces, burgers and yogurt. Its targets include replacing common animal proteins and functional additives such as methyl cellulose. Shiru says its ingredients achieve similar cost and versatility at scale to animal analogs and aims to have ingredients ready for customers by early next year. The company forecasts first commercial products containing its ingredients could appear on grocery shelves as early as 2023. Shiru is Emeryville-based, currently employs 22 people and plans to double headcount while moving into new Alameda headquarters and scaling manufacturing. Shiru is a computational biology company that produces novel, functional proteins for food applications leveraging molecular design. Led by Jasmin Hume and based in San Francisco, the company uses computational approaches to create ingredients aimed at reducing reliance on animal-based foods. Their core products are designed proteins intended to be sustainable and nutritious alternatives to animal-derived ingredients. Shiru raised $3.5m in seed funding to support its growth. The company intends to use the funds to expand operations. Investors in the round include Lux Capital, Y Combinator, S2G, CPT Capital and others.
- WiBotic
Participated · Series A · Jun 2020
WiBotic develops advanced wireless charging and power-optimization solutions for aerial, mobile and marine robots. Its hardware and software products aim to maximize robot fleet uptime and serve as integral components of fully autonomous robotic operations. The company works with customers across a variety of industries to optimize robot operations. WiBotic is based in Seattle, WA, and is led by CEO Ben Waters. It raised $5.7M in a Series A and plans to use the proceeds to accelerate growth, expand its sales team, advance hardware and software engineering, and meet increased customer demand. Following the raise, Mark Rogers joined WiBotic’s board of directors. Wibotic is a Seattle-based provider of wireless power and battery intelligence solutions for the robotic industry. Its core product automatically detects approaching robots or landing drones and wirelessly charges their batteries via a charging platform. The technology targets aerial, mobile and aquatic robot fleets, helping companies optimize fleet uptime and enabling fully autonomous operations. Founded in 2015 by CEO Ben Waters, the company positions its solutions as integral components of autonomous robotic systems. The new $2.5m seed funding will be used primarily to enhance product development and increase sales and marketing activities. WiBotic offers a wireless charging solution for drones and robots that combines a transmitter/receiver system with battery-management tools and fleet-level power optimization. The company says its adaptive near-field wireless charging is more efficient than standard inductive and resonant systems, can charge at the same or faster rates than plug-in chargers, and reduces maintenance costs. Its system enables autonomous charging to remove the need for human intervention and to extend battery lifetime, and it is reported to work in varying weather conditions and underwater. Customers span industries including agriculture, medical, security, videography, and marine biology, and the company expects to add more clients. WiBotic was founded within UW’s electrical engineering and computer science departments by Ben Waters and professor Joshua Smith and has support from UW’s CoMotion. The company is about a year old and operates with a roughly 10-person team.