This episode features an enlightening discussion with Marcia Dawood, a prominent advocate for women in business and impact investing.

The central theme revolves around the critical need to amplify the voices of women entrepreneurs and address the substantial funding gap they face in securing investments.

Marcia, a seasoned investor and author, shares her compelling insights on how women-led ventures are essential in tackling significant global challenges, including women's health.

Throughout the conversation, we explore the importance of building supportive networks and fostering relationships with potential investors long before seeking funding. As we delve into various strategies for bridging the funding gap, listeners will gain valuable perspectives on the evolving landscape of investment in women-led businesses and the vital role they play in shaping a prosperous future.

Takeaways:

• Marcia's journey illustrates the significance of early-stage investment in women-led enterprises and the challenges they face in securing funding.
• Listeners are encouraged to build relationships with potential investors long before seeking funding to enhance their chances of success.
• The discussion highlights the biases women face in securing investment and the need for more women in decision-making roles in finance.
• The episode underlines the diversity of women-led initiatives, particularly in healthcare, which have historically received insufficient funding.
• Marcia shares effective strategies for women founders to bridge funding gaps, including crowdfunding and developing investor relationships.

Chapters:

02:56 The Journey to Advocacy in Impact Investing

15:40 Building Relationships for Funding: A Crucial Strategy for Women Founders

18:23 Funding Strategies for Entrepreneurs

29:20 Understanding Equity Crowdfunding vs. Angel Investing

34:59 The Importance of Education in Angel Investing

40:05 Investing in Women's Health: The Joy Lux Story

Burning Questions Answered:

1.Why do women still receive only ~2% of venture capital funding—and what can we do to change that?

2.How can women founders bridge the funding gap, especially without friends-and-family capital?

3.Do you need to be wealthy to become an angel investor?

4.What are the different paths to investing in women-led startups—angel, venture, or crowdfunding?

5.How can aligning with values-aligned investors early unlock success for founders?

Favorite Quotes:

"Investing isn’t just for the wealthy—it’s for anyone ready to make a difference.” - Marcia

“Urgency doesn’t come from pressure tactics. It comes from truth.” - Marcia

Closing Thoughts:

This conversation is a must-listen for any woman founder who’s fundraising—or thinking about it. Marsha breaks down the myths of investing (no, you don’t need to be a millionaire), shares actionable paths to raise capital creatively (hello, crowdfunding and debt platforms), and highlights how crucial early investor alignment is. Whether you're on the founder side or investor side, this episode will reframe what’s possible—and invite you to be part of the change.

Offers & Contact Information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciadawood/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marciadawood/ 

Website: www.marciadawood.com 

TedX Talk: https://youtu.be/yI4i4qb3E8E 

Get a free chapter of Marcia’s bestselling book, “Do Good While Doing Well”:

https://www.marciadawood.com/dogood

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yja3w7nh

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Amazon Prime: https://tinyurl.com/366syddj 

Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/bdhananz 

RSS Feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/womengetfunded/ 

Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

Are Your GROWING or PLATEAUING? https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/

1-Day Growth Plan: https://aforceforgood.biz/free-plan/ 

FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

The Book:  https://aforceforgood.biz/book/ 

Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Here is a 23 minute training you can watch on DOUBLE SPEED to learn how to level up your LinkedIn! https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63205a117a90349a51404c20

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice and wisdom of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host Kriko Sullivan, lifetime founder, impact investor and creator of the Force Movement business system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

So today we have a super special guest.

Today we have Marsha Dawood who stands out as a TEDx speaker, author of her best selling book do good While Doing well and a seasoned early stage investor with a resolute mission to bridge the gap from startup inception to to thriving enterprises.

As a venture capital partner at Mindshift Capital and a chair, I always have a hard time with this word emeritus.

A chair Emeritus of the Angel Capital Association, Marcia champions the cause of diversifying leadership in startups, significantly improving outcomes.

Her work extends to her role as an associate producer on the Atlantic acclaimed documentary show her the Money showcasing her dedication to amplifying women's role in Finance.

With over 50 early stage investments, her profound influence is evident as she fosters environments where diverse companies can resolve significant global challenges like climate change and health care.

Marsha's Leadership in the ACA's Growing Women Women's Capital group further underscores her commitment to continue catalyzing change by fostering investment in women led ventures.

Welcome Marsha.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

It's great to be here.

Well, tell us, what is a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

Well, I'm going to have to say there are many but Buoyant by Susie Deville and the book is just packed full of things that you wouldn't necessarily think about related to, but there are so many.

And it's a way for you to think about your life differently in the way that you handle your morning routine, the way that you maybe journal so that you can kind of really get down to the core of your own creativity and that creativity can then span into the rest of your work life and your personal life.

Sounds like a great book.

I don't know this book.

So Buoyant by Susie Deville.

Awesome.

I will absolutely check it out.

Right?

We all need more self care.

Yes.

So Marisha, you have written a beautiful book.

A book that I savor and return to often.

It's.

It's got so much good packed information and wisdom and it's also a great story.

I feel like you tell a great story.

So share with us your personal journey that's led you to become such a passionate advocate.

Advocate for impact investing, especially with women.

Yeah.

So I was a kind of corporate person doing the same thing and going to my job every day for a long time.

And then one day I was invited to an angel investing meeting.

And I remember thinking, cool, what's that?

Like, I have no idea what angel investing is.

I thought maybe it was somebody that, like, came down from the sky and, like, dropped some money on people, lots of money, and they have to be like, a billionaire and all these things.

And so I go to the meeting.

I'm living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the time, and I end up seeing some entrepreneurs who are talking about their local companies.

And I thought to myself, where have I been?

Like, I.

I must be living under a rock because this is really, really interesting.

And it's so different than anything that I think about in my day to day because I'm doing, you know, the corporate thing.

And I just thought, wow, I really am.

I.

I'm so fascinated.

I have to keep learning.

And so I keep going to a couple meetings.

I quickly learn how little funding goes to women.

I think to myself, wait a minute, women.

We're like 50% of the population.

You can't tell me that we only have like 2% of the good ideas, which is basically how much of this money was going to women.

So I get a little bit more involved.

I make a couple investments myself, make a couple mistakes, which is what I talk about in the book, so that other people don't make some of the mistakes that I made early on.

Because, remember, this was like 13 years ago.

And then along the way, I just started to realize, wait a minute, we can do good in the world.

We can get to this impact.

And I have kind of a love hate relationship with that word, because we can get to impact and we can get financial returns as well.

Now.

Yes, of course, this is a risky asset class.

Anybody who's thinking about making investments should go talk to their financial advisor, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Disclaimer.

But we really need to get more people to even realize that this is something that's accessible to them.

And that's really what I've been trying to talk about, educate on through my podcast, the Angel Next Door, and then through writing the book.

Well, you know, you said a lot there.

And.

And just I.

I sort of had the same epiphany myself.

I wasn't in corporate, but I'd come out of founding a company and growing it, and I started to learn about angel investing.

And I was surprised to learn that you don't have to be a bazillionaire to do this right.

And, and what I learned very quickly, and I know this is important to you, is that, is that it's ventures and, you know, having early stage companies that you invest in and helping them grow through the cycles is really important.

And so obviously, we only have certain number of companies led by women CEOs or originally founded by women CEOs.

I think it's, it's like 13% or something.

Women CEOs.

And so that's a disparity.

And so talk to us about, like, why it is in your mind, so important that women founders from the beginning, get these dollars.

Well, so there's two sides to that.

Yes, we absolutely need women getting the dollars because they're working on things that maybe aren't being worked on otherwise, especially when it comes to women's health.

If you look at the statistics around how much funding goes to health care, that's quite a bit.

But the amount that actually goes to women's health is very, very small in comparison.

And remember, women are not little men.

We are our own beings.

We need special treatment, special care, and special types of health care.

And that really hasn't been worked on.

I mean, even until the 90s, they didn't even require women to be in clinical trials.

It's a little crazy.

So, yes, the women absolutely need to have the funding.

What I worry about, though, is how are we going to get that money to these women?

And that really requires us to have more women, or the people that look like the people we want to fund actually involved in the investment decisions.

They have to either be writing the checks, an investment manager, you know, on an investment committee, whatever it is, there needs to be more diversity at the investment level.

And so when I would talk to people over the years, it wasn't like they were saying, hey, you know, I'm, I'm not, I, I'm not really that interested in that.

They would just say, well, that's not something I could do.

And I would say, why?

And they say, oh, no, that's just for rich people.

I have to have a finance degree.

I have to do that.

I have to be invited, yada, yada, yada.

And I'm thinking to myself, no, no, no, you really don't like, think about.

There's all these different ways.

And I would like, start to talk a little bit about it.

And then they would say, I had no idea.

So maybe this is something that I would be interested in.

But it's like it never even came on the radar.

So how do we get past?

Like we have to at least get it on the radar so that we're talking about it and then maybe we can start to make an impact.

Because if you look at the statistics in the venture capital world and I, I literally just saw something earlier today about this and it has not changed over the last like 20, 30 years, whatever it is, it's still around that 2% number.

But if you look at the data that's come out of the Angel Capital association and we put out data every year called the Angel Funders Report, that data about female angel investors has actually gone up quite a bit.

Like I remember the first Angel Capital association summit I went to, there was a line at the men's room.

Okay, this is what we're dealing with, right?

Yeah.

Now it seems like we're up to probably 25, even 30% of investors are female at the angel level.

Now that's great, but those are smaller checks.

Right.

So we still have work to do, a lot of work to do.

Plus we're only 25, 30%.

We need to get a little higher than that.

But these are the ways that we start to make impact and start to get money to female founders.

Yeah, it's super important.

And then, you know, and then it continues on.

Right.

Once, once a.

One of the challenges I hear about is a female founder might get support from women angel investors and women led venture.

But then as they start to grow and need that later stage funding, it can also be a challenge.

So we as women really need to work together collectively to make those investments to change the way we think about investing and then also make sure we find ourselves in those rooms of whether it's venture or private equity decision making tables to, to continue to, to move those dollars, you know, upstream in the funding cycles.

Yes.

100%.

Yeah.

So why do you, so, so your, your idea then is that the reasons why women get such a small percentage, that 2% largely comes because the people making the decisions aren't women and the money that comes from them isn't women.

Is that the primary?

That's definitely a big part of it.

I also think we have some, some biases.

And I'm not saying that it's men against women biases.

I'm talking everybody biases against women.

Including women, Right?

Including women.

Yeah, including women.

Right.

And part of that is just that for think about it.

We haven't even really been fully in the workforce until after World War II or around World War II.

So this isn't a very long period of time to make generational change changes and mindset changes into how we feel about women being the leader.

So in a lot of cases I see where, when people are evaluating a company that's led by a woman, are they saying to themselves, is this a lifestyle business?

Is this something that she's going to work on until she has a baby?

We've heard that before.

A lot of, you know, is that, is this like a.

Not maybe as scalable as it might be if it were led by a male founder.

And part of that is just our own inherent biases of what women and society and all the societal norms.

We could go into all of that.

But this is just something that I think, again, if we talk about it, if we start to showcase the, the successes, we start to show how successful women can be when given the, the investment dollars to be able to build XYZ company.

If we could start to showcase that a little bit more, well, then maybe we can change, you know, at least some of these perceptions so that women can be more successful.

I love that.

And we, and we have to each of us act sort of individually to move those mindsets.

I even found myself in conversations with women founders that are pitching where I ask questions that are more about risk than about vision.

And, you know, and that's a common challenge, right, that women face is there's put in these defensive modes rather, you know, rather than talking about, you know, what's your vision?

What is.

What is the good.

This is going to.

How far can you take this?

They get asked actually different questions.

And I've even like, like you said, I found myself in that, that, that, that, that situation where I'm like, okay, I got to change my language.

I've got to ask different questions.

I've got to have a different mindset when I'm talking to a woman who's in power.

That's right.

In fact, Donna Kansi did a study out of the, out of Columbia University, and there was, it was about how questions were being asked.

To your exact point, is it a promotion question that's being asked, which happens to happen more with male founders, or is it a prevention type of question that happens to be asked more with female founders?

So it could be the same basic question.

You want to know how they're going to grow revenue?

To the promotion question, you might say, well, what is it that you're going to do in order to grow your revenue?

And same basic question could be, but in a prevention way would be, well, what are you going to do in order to, in order to mitigate risk and make sure that you don't overspend or however they say it.

Well, so it's basically they want to get after the same thing like how are you going to make money?

Right, yeah, exactly.

The way that the question is asked, it can be a bias, especially when it comes to women.

So we and Donna Kanzi in her study does a brilliant job of explaining that if the person being asked the prevention questions actually answers the questions with a promotion answer, the outcomes will be better.

And I just think that is such a great tool that every entrepreneur should have in their tool belt.

Tool belt is know that whatever type of question you're being asked, the spin isn't necessarily to spin the actual answer, it's just how you're framing it.

Brilliant, Brilliant.

So we can all integrate that because we all can, you know, are going to be asked those prevention questions and I'm sure coming up in the future.

So for women, women founders who are out there trying to raise money and create new visionary companies to make a difference in the world and the future and more prosperity for new demographics and economies, what would you say to a founder who's struggling to get their first checks to raise their first round?

How, how can women founders bridge that funding gap?

Yeah, and this is a good one.

And there's about a couple pieces here to think about.

One is I always tell founders that they really need to start to build relationships with potential investors way before you need money.

Because if people come to us as investors and say, hey, I built this great thing, look how cool it is, how about you invest in it?

I don't know you.

We don't know, like, we don't know what you're building.

We don't really have a good handle on what the problem is that you're solving all those things.

So building those relationships early can be so incredibly critical.

So this was like a long term relationship, watching what the founder was building, what, what she was doing, all of those kind of things.

So that's a really big part of it is like, how can we get founders to build those relationships early so that when they're going out for funding, you know, don't keep it such a Big secret.

Like, even though what you're building is, you know, you're trying to be like, okay, I don't want to show anybody until it's perfect, you know, but you really do want to show people your thought process, how you're going about it, how you're building it, and all of those types of things.

And of course, is bootstrapping, which I know every entrepreneur hates that word, but.

But it is important to think about when you're very early in the process.

We're talking like you're scribbling it on a napkin, you know, or.

Or at the back of an envelope when you're thinking about that and you're thinking, how.

How much funding do I think I would need in order to get just something that I could show people?

How much funding would I then need in order to get it to a customer?

And all the things that would have to go into a timeline, Those are where I think entrepreneurs sometimes struggle.

They just think, oh, if I could just get the money, let me get the money.

I gotta get the money.

And if I could just get money, then I will be able to.

And then fill in the blank.

And that really doesn't happen.

I've seen that happen before where founders are lucky enough to get some money.

And this is founders of all types, including women, including men.

But then they.

They get to a point where they're like, you know, I had the money, I built the thing, but now I need more money.

And it doesn't really look like I've accomplished much because all I did was really build the thing.

I didn't actually get customers, I didn't get traction, all those types of things.

So there's that, but then you've got the.

That kind of valley in the middle, right?

So you're.

You've had the idea, and now you want to get to the funding.

And like, how could you do something that could get you some money in the meantime?

And this is a lot of what I go into in my book is how do you fill those voids when you don't have the friends and family round because you don't have those connections?

What is it that you can do?

And I really am a huge fan, especially if you have a product, if you have a service, if you're selling directly to the public, do some type of a crowdfunding campaign.

And nowadays there are tons of them out there.

Yes, you can do equity crowdfunding now, which means you'd give away a little bit of your company in order to get money.

And that's great.

But in a lot of cases you could do like a Kickstarter or an Indiegogo just to get, which is just rewards based.

You don't have to give away any equity and you could really start to move the needle on, you know, what you might be thinking is a great concept, a big problem that you're solving, but you're going to learn a ton just getting all that customer feedback.

And then the last thing I'll say is the one thing that I don't think very many people even realize exists because I know I didn't really know until about a year or two ago, is debt crowdfunding.

So interesting because as an investor I'm thinking, hey, this is pretty cool.

I could invest through a crowd, a debt crowdfunding platform.

Maybe I Invest, let's say $500 or something.

I'll use easy numbers and, and then as the entrepreneur is paying that back, I, as the investor, I'm getting money back.

I don't have to wait until the exit.

I don't have to wait until like there's some big, you know, moment where the company is acquired by another company eight, ten years down the road.

So this is something that's attractive to investors.

And I don't think entrepreneurs even know that it's something that they could do.

And it's.

So it's, it would be a little bit like you went to a bank except you, you know, banks aren't going to necessarily fund startup ideas, but this would be a way that you could get the crowd to help you get to that next step.

I love this and I'm 100% on board with you, Marsha, that I always talk to founders and say raise money is late into the future as you can, right?

You want to hold your equity, you want to gain value in your company before you start to dilute it.

And you know, great suggestions here at crowdfunding, wherever you can bootstrap, bootstrap, like, like it'll, it'll create that urgency to solve the problems of growth and you know, whatever your innovations are, and you're right, money isn't going to solve the problem of having a company.

Like you still have to go through those iterations and the more the further along you can be, the better off you're going to be.

And I love this idea too.

There are more and more crowdfunding platforms.

I know your website has a bunch of them listed in one nice neat place.

So make sure you go to marshadawood.com to get that and you Also have some of these debt crowdfunders there too.

Yeah.

So these are just a plethora of resources on your website for founders.

And I agree this building relationships.

Where do you build relationships?

I'm a founder.

I don't have relationships with people who have deep pockets.

Where do I even find people like this?

Yeah, that's such a good question.

I will say don't go on LinkedIn to find people that have investor in their profile and send them an email saying, I need $50,000.

Right.

Don't do that.

Right.

That's bad.

You're not going to get anybody's attention.

But the one thing that I usually tell founders when they're like, hey, I don't, I don't even know where to start looking, what is the problem that you're solving?

Because to me, that is the big thing, not the solution you want to make for the problem.

But let's just talk about the problem.

Are you trying to find a treatment for a disease?

Are you trying to find the next great beverage that's going to come out and be bought by Pepsi just like Poppy just was?

All of the things.

What is the problem that you're solving?

Go find the people that really, really care about that problem.

Talk about the problem.

And then as you bring up your solution now you have built, you know, a network around what it is that you're doing.

And maybe that just starts with you're putting out some social media posts saying, hey, I think this is a really big problem.

XYZ and I want to talk more to people who also care about xyz.

How about, you know, blah, blah, blah, let's engage in some comments.

Da, da, da, da.

And then you start to find the people that are that really care about this.

A good example would be if you are in the medical field and you kind of have this idea for something that's kind of niche because it's in, you know, one specific part of healthcare or whatever.

The doctors that also understand the problem, not necessarily what you're trying to do as a solution, but like, they really understand the problem.

They are the ones, I've seen it over and over again, who will get behind you or will get behind the founder because they really understand, oh, this is a big, big problem.

And investors love it when they see a founder or an entrepreneur who says, you know what, I created my company because I had the problem and it was so horrible, it was so sticky, I hated it.

I needed to create a solution and that's what this company is.

Yeah, I Love that.

And, and it's also, it's, it's genuine, it's, it's authentic.

Here's the problem.

And therefore, and you're not going to just find investors, right, in that, in that vein of talking about the problem, you're going to find other types of partners, potentially people who might be able to contribute to your team in some way, advisory board members.

It could also be a future customer and, you know, helping you gather around, creating a test group.

So that's great advice for all of us.

And so, so then, all right, so women can find their way to get through this gap and hopefully find some funding.

So, so then I, I've heard you, I want to talk, shift a little bit about, you know, those of us listening and thinking about getting involved as investors.

And so what, what do you, how do you, how do you guide people, how do you guide our listeners to start to get involved and sort of debunk the idea that you have to be a bazillionaire in order to, in order to be an investor in women?

Right?

So a couple things.

One is, there are entrepreneurs in every city, in every town, all over the world.

So find out what's going on in your local community.

But it was really interesting to watch what was happening in the entrepreneurial ecosystems in each of those cities, because these were not in, in some cases they were big cities, in other cases they were smaller towns.

And just watching how people gathered around the local entrepreneurs, even in a big city, they, the people knew about what was happening.

And so if you really want to know a little bit more about this entire arena, what's happening in Innov, what's being worked on in your local community, just literally, you could go do a Google search that says startup events in, and then you just fill in your city or town, super simple.

And you can just find out, go and just start talking to people.

You don't have to invest anything right away.

You don't have to even say you're an investor, Nothing.

You just have to say, hey, I'm interested in learning what's going on right in my own backyard a little bit like I did by accident because somebody kind of shoved me over to a meeting and said, hey, there's stuff going on you, you should know about it.

And I just think that that is so fascinating.

The other thing is with my book, I did write a workbook that goes with it.

And the.

One of the exercises, which I think is really fun especially to do as a family, especially if you have, like, teenage kids, is to go to an equity crowdfunding site.

And you could even use Kickstarter, Indiegogo.

It doesn't have to be equity, but equity crowdfunding there is a component of an actual fundraise.

So.

So that piece, if you really want to learn about fundraising, is the best place to go.

So right now, the three places that have the market share for Equity crowdfunding, the three platforms are We Funder, StartEngine and Republic.

Right?

So you just pick one, or you could just Google and find another one.

It doesn't matter anyway.

Make a mock portfolio of like 10 companies.

And what's fun is if you do this kind of separately at first, like, you're on your iPad, kids are on an iPad.

And then they look and they're like, well, I like this company.

And you're like, well, I like this.

And then you can have, like, some really interesting conversations about the problems that are being solved, the solutions that are out there, how they're going to go about building the company, raising money, all of these things.

These are things that kids don't get taught in school.

So I remember I've had tons of amazing conversations with my stepsons about this because it's just an interesting way to talk about something that isn't talked about every day.

And you can learn so much from, like, their thought process.

They'll learn from your thought process.

Again, it can be fun.

I love this because, you know, the other piece is, is that you can talk about it all day long, but until you actually look at what these startups are, you really don't understand.

Like, and there are so many different wonderful ideas across every single imaginable, you know, industry.

And it's.

I.

You just feel like you're, you're.

It's fascinating just to view them and then you can start slowly, right, to figure out.

Right, that's right.

Now with equity crowdfunding, you can invest, you know, just a couple hundred dollars or 100.

I mean, it doesn't have to be thousands and thousands of dollars.

I mean, when I got started, there were no options like that.

I wish I could have started learning, you know, kind of gradually easing into it or even doing a mock portfolio where you.

You don't invest anything.

Right?

But that wasn't something that you could really do 13 years ago.

But now there are just so many options.

And so many ways that you can get to know what's happening locally, what's happening regionally in your area, and of course, what's happening across the country as well and the world.

So tell us a little bit between what, what, what it means to, to invest on a crowdfunding.

We'll say equity crowdfunding platform versus being an angel investor or a venture investor.

Yeah, okay, that's good.

Let's talk about that.

So an equity crowdfunding investor is going to be part of a crowd or a pool of people that are specifically on an online portal.

And that's where all the information funnels in and out.

You, as the investor are going to get all your information through that portal.

They might send you an email every once in a while if you do make an investment and say, hey, the quarter one updates are in your email or, you know, or in your portal.

Go, go look at them if you want to, that type of thing.

So you're part of a group that's through this online portal and through the online portal only.

So everything that's one of the SEC regulations is that all information between the company and the investors has to be done through the portal.

And I like that a lot because that means that me as, you know, a single investor, I'm not necessarily going to get, you know, kind of off to the side and somebody else is going to get some kind of preferential information or preferential treatment.

You know, we all, we're all there together and we're all treated the same.

Okay, with angels.

Angels invest using money out of their own checkbook.

So these would be after tax dollars that they write to a company in order to become an investor, an equity investor, meaning that there's going to be an exchange for ownership of some sort.

And that could be, you know, for money.

And sometimes there'll be maybe some debt at the beginning, like convertible note that might convert into equity later.

You might hear those terms.

I try to demystify a lot of that in my book because sometimes I'll be like convertible note.

What do you mean?

There's all these terms being thrown around, right?

So I don't really like to get too detailed on that, but that's something that an angel is essentially taking their money and investing in the company.

Now, what I always say, said when I first became an angel is I got, I was a little too, writing the checks from the heart, you know, not the head.

So much.

Like, yes, I was doing diligence on the company, but I'd be like, I love this idea, I love the founder.

I have to, I, I want to make, I want to invest because this is so cool.

Okay, so angels are allowed to do that because guess what?

They don't have anybody else to answer to except maybe their dog or their husband or spouse, something like that.

Right.

You know, but they don't have other investors.

They don't have what we call limited partners that they have to invest or have to answer to.

But now when you move up a little bit and now there's bigger dollars, bigger checks being written, that would be the venture capitalists, and they are the ones who manage other people's money.

So they're writing a check out of a fund.

Typically that will is like a pool of other people.

So sometimes an angel will actually be one of those people that invests in the fund.

I do that a lot because I love funds because you get instant diversification and usually they're pretty smart people that are running the fund and then that money gets invested into that.

But if I'm the manager, if I'm managing the fund, I'm the venture capitalist.

I have to really be thinking about.

I have to stick to the thesis.

I've told my investors my LPs up front, hey, this is what I'm going to invest in, and I have to stick to that.

And that's something that I also like about funds, is that you know the types of companies you're going to be investing in way beforehand.

So if I know I really like health care and I want to get involved in a healthcare fund, that's great because now I can invest into a healthcare fund and I know all those companies are going to be that.

And I won't necessarily have my squirrel.

Squirrel, like, hey, this is so cool mentality that I'll be like a little bit more disciplined.

Right.

So that, that kind of keeps me in my lane.

I love that.

Right.

And I, it's, I love that how you describe the three options and, and again, for any, for our listeners, it's, it's good to explore the three.

Right.

And, and try, try out.

And how do you, how, where do you.

Certainly your book is a great resource.

Where else do you recommend that curious, interested investors early, you know, getting in, getting their toe, like to discover what a convertible note is and to, to decide whether or not I'm an angel investor.

Should I invest in this?

Is the price a good price?

Like where, where's good resources to learn all of that?

Yeah.

So the Angel Capital association has a lot of classes that people can go Take.

There's a lot of information on their website.

And, you know, I haven't looked at it really recently, but I know that the online equity crowdfunding platforms also do a really nice job with education because they want to make sure that people are making educated decisions.

What you don't want to have happen is somebody tries angel investing.

And I talk, I have an example in my book, actually, of two people that ended up writing checks directly to companies as angels.

One person picked three companies.

The other person picked three companies, but not the same companies.

The one did great and had this amazing return, like, really quickly, which doesn't always happen.

And then you've got the other person, like, lost all their money, like, in a really short period of time.

So, so both of them have a very strong opinion now about angel investing.

One of them thinks it's the greatest thing that ever happened, and the other one thinks it's the worst thing that ever happened and they'll never do it again.

In the middle lies the truth, right?

So because you don't really want either to happen, you.

If both of them had gone through some education, they probably would not have made those investments.

Now, the guy who made the money, he, he's probably, he would probably be thinking, yeah, but I made the money because I, you know, I picked the companies that I was smart.

Okay, fine, but that's not really true.

I mean, that's just like the, the numbers don't add up that way.

It's usually like he, he just got lucky, right?

So, so that diversified portfolio, and we talk at the Angel Capital association about it being like, at least 10, 20 companies, that's sometimes hard to do if you're writing individual checks.

That's why I do like funds so much.

And nowadays you can invest in angelfi column angel funds because they're smaller funds which require much less of a minimum check size.

So before, I mean, back when I started doing angel investing, if you wanted to get into a venture capital fund, you better have like 250,000, a million dollars.

It was like, totally not approachable, right?

It could not do.

But now there are angel funds.

You can invest for as little as $5,000 or, you know, much, much, much, much smaller dollar amounts so that you can get that instant diversification.

You can learn alongside of the people who are managing the fund, and you'll also be able to participate without necessarily saying, oh, my gosh, I got to put up all this money.

The beginning, totally.

I, I, I really resonate with the idea of, especially if you can, if you can put your money into an angel fund or a venture fund.

That's.

You can learn a lot.

A lot.

Yeah.

Right.

And, and then you're not.

I remember kind of my first couple of angel investments.

I felt like I really don't know what I'm doing.

Right.

And that's not a good place to be.

Exactly.

Right, right.

And so I mean now we have the, the we funders and whatever.

So you can, you can, you know, not.

Right.

Quite as big of a check size.

You can be much more, you know, conservative.

But I have loved, as you said, I've loved learning about.

And I like women run venture or angel funds because then you also tend to have aligned values.

You're the, what you're investing in is something I'm going to be interested in.

But you learn.

Right.

Like there's a lot of involvement.

I know you're, you're involved in at least one venture firm.

Right?

You're several, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

Over the years.

Yeah.

And, and so that's also a great way to learn.

And you're on some investment committees, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's great.

We put together the Next Wave Impact fund.

Alicia Robb actually is the one who is the mastermind behind it.

And then there were nine of us that were on the investment committee and it was a great model because we would bring, we all saw different deal flow based on our own everyday things that we were doing.

And then we would bring that to the fund.

And what our thesis was was that we would be able to have the fund make money and still make an impact, hence the term impact fund.

But we also wanted to say, hey, we're going to make some money here too.

And I talk about it in the book because we have had several exits already and there are still several thriving companies in the fund.

So we're already tracking to do exactly that.

So it's pretty exciting.

It's very exciting.

And so tell us about maybe a couple of your favorite investments that have not only made some money but also you feel good about the goodness it's bringing to the world.

The good doing the good.

Yeah.

So I have no business investing in healthcare companies but I am so soft hearted about it because I just love what they're doing.

But I'm not a scientist so I have to be super careful.

And I always have to tell, I tell other people too.

And I definitely caution in my book about it is get around people, surround yourself and that angels are very good about that.

They're good about doing things in groups.

There they do diligence in groups.

They really take a look at those companies because I should not be investing in science companies or health care companies, but I do because I love what they're doing and I really want to see them move forward.

So there have actually been.

And I.

This is.

This is one of those things.

I've talked to some.

It depends on, you know, health.

Health care investors tend to invest in, like a pharma company, meaning like a drug development.

But they are very long tail.

They take a lot of money.

A lot of money, A lot of money.

But one of the companies that we had invested in a while back, they did a secondary sale, which doesn't happen very often, but that can be awfully fun.

And we were bought out with a 10x return.

So that was exciting because then I was like, okay, so maybe investing in pharma isn't a terrible idea.

You just never know.

So it's one of those things.

Again, everything's risky.

But the other things that I've been super excited to see grow are companies like Joy Lux, which is a company.

You know them, right?

They're a company working on women's sexual health and mainly pelvic floor health.

And that's something that, oh, I write about the CEO in my book because Colette had so many stories about how she just couldn't fundraise.

People didn't want to talk about men especially didn't want to talk about pelvic floor health.

They didn't want to have to say, you know, words in Monday morning meetings that they didn't feel comfortable with related to women's body parts.

So, you know, these were things they were like, I don't really want to.

I don't want to do this.

And then, of course, you know, Joy Lux is also, because they're talking about pelvic floor health, the Facebook algorithms, the Amazon, you know, all of these algorithms kind of forced them into a bucket.

That was not accurate either.

So in some cases, they really struggled to be able to even stay in business.

But Colette is an incredible CEO and the company is doing fabulously well.

They have morphed the company into a lot more than just pelvic floor health.

And now they're into menopause and postpartum.

And it's just like, it's a great example of how a women's health company can evolve and become so much more.

And I think that's something that people, especially women who Are the users of these products are super excited to see come to market.

I couldn't agree more.

I was on your website and checking out Joylux and it's really like there's been a little blue pill in the market for a long time and.

Yeah, right.

And so to have women's bodies, women's concerns, women's sexuality be addressed and the pelvic floor thing is a big deal.

I mean we, we need it for our health and, and having babies causes us to need to have, have, have pelvic floor health.

I know that in France, for example, when you have a hysterectomy or after you have children, they, they immediately flood you with information.

And we don't do that in the United States.

And so I feel like this is the good that, that women led companies can bring.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I love it.

All right, so how can our listeners be in touch with you?

What's the best way to learn and kind of go deeper?

The best way is just go to my website, which is Marcia M A R C I A Dawood D A W o o d.com and on there people can get a free first chapter of the book.

The intro and the first chapter are free on the website.

There are tons of other resources.

The podcast, of course, I'm up to about 125 episodes now, so that's exciting.

And the podcast really was at first built to be, hey, let's showcase what some other angels are doing.

Mostly it was my friends and I'd be like asking them questions like, why do you do this and where'd you get the money?

And you know, those types of things.

And there's still, you know, some of that as well.

But I've really tried to morph it into what is equity crowdfunding and who did it?

And I've had entrepreneurs, a couple entrepreneurs come on that have raised significant funding using equity crowdfunding.

Because I want to, I want entrepreneurs to be able to see, hey, this is possible.

And I want investors to see like, hey, if we do rally together, this is what can happen.

And it can be, you know, a really good result.

So those types of things, we didn't really get into it.

But investing with philanthropic capital is also something that especially women love, love, love.

So all of these things, you can find all the info on my website.

Wonderful.

And you know, when you go to marcia dawood.com dogood you can find that, that book chapter, you're also going to find a plethora of other resources that I'm just telling you it's just like you'll want to spend the afternoon there.

There's a Halo strategy worksheet, there's a do good while doing well exercise and there is a starting a conversation about money workbook also.

And she also has great discounts from some of the amazing women led brands that she, she supports.

Really good boxed wine.

You can get a discount Joy Lux, which we talked about a little bit.

The Voo, Forte and Rosette, Rosie, all these, these are such fun, interesting, important companies to check out and use the, the, the discounts that Marsha offers.

And so in closing, what is a piece of wisdom that you would like to share A final piece of wisdom you'd like to share with women founders who are growing visionary companies that will ultimately make the world better.

Oh, there's so much.

But I would have to say, you know that alignment with the investors early on can be so critical.

There are entrepreneurs I've talked to female founders who have said look, if it wasn't for this one or two people, I would not be where I am.

And that alignment started really early.

So I really encourage especially women, go out, find the other women that will back you, find your tribe, find your people and have that be a really strong part of how you grow and scale your company.

I love that great wisdom.

And thank you Marcia.

Thank you for being here with us today on the Wisdom of Women show.

We really appreciate all that you have shared with us and your story.

Be sure to all of our listeners, be sure to also watch Marcia's TedX.

I'll have it in the, in the description below but it is awesome.

It's, I don't know, 15 minutes long if that and it is, it's 11 minutes long and it's, it will, it will make you smile.

You'll make your heart.

She tells a story about her dad and her family and, and so and why you know how she kind of got into into this world of investing as well.

So be sure to listen there and to everybody listening, please be sure to like follow share the wisdom of women show and whatever your favorite listening platform is and to inform and to infuse more of your wisdom into your business.

Be sure to take the growth readiness quiz at a ForceForGood biz quiz and uncover where your insight is most needed.

And let's not forget the world is made better by women led business.

Let's go make the world a better place.

Cheers.