EXCLUSIVE: “F is For Diversity…” – Nina Wöss, Fund F in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

Most VC investors aren’t putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to backing diversity. For the co-founders of Fund F, it’s core to who they are. Fund F is a pan-European VC fund investing in pre-seed and seed stage companies with gender-diverse founding teams across climatetech, healthtech, femtech, fintech and HRtech.

From its office in Vienna, co-founder Nina Wöss talks fundraising, financial inclusion, and period tracking apps with The Fintech Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Ali Paterson.

The Fintech Magazine: Fund F closed its first €20million fund in 2022. How did you become involved in early-stage investing and what led you to this point?”

Nina Wöss: While at university, I was already engaged in the topic of early-stage investing and entrepreneurship. That led to my first job, which was at Speedinvest, now one of the most prominent funds investing in early-stage companies.

I was there for eight years and it gave me the opportunity to learn everything, from how to work with startups, to building a portfolio. I was exposed to the European venture system, and as a young woman, I experienced firsthand how much the gender gap was prevalent for both investors and founders. The experience inspired me to read more about gender equality and feminism. I also met my co-founder, Lisa-Marie Fassl, around the same time.

We started to work on addressing the challenges of female entrepreneurship and built a community called Female Founders. This led to us launching our own fund, Fund F.

The Fintech Magazine: Investors often talk about the importance of investing in diverse teams. Yet the stats tell a different story with only 1.8 per cent of all VC funds invested in women-led startups in Europe in 2023, according to PitchBook. What would you say to investors to encourage them to do more of what they say?

Nina Wöss: The majority of people are not thinking about who is designing the products they use, but these products shape our lives for better or worse. It’s very important that investors support leaders of tech businesses who build diverse teams to create products that reflect the diversity of their customer base.

It also makes fiscal sense to invest in diverse teams. Data has repeatedly shown that diverse teams run higher-performing businesses and generate higher returns in the long term. That’s not only with regards to gender, but other characteristics like cultural background, ethnicity, and age, etc. At Fund F, we consider how diverse a company is at every layer of the business, beyond the founding team. This includes their board, employees, and investors on their CAP table. That’s how Fund F will achieve our long-term impact over the next 10 to 20 years. Like any investor, we hope to see exits from successful companies, but we want to create a legacy of future unicorns where not only the founders, but their employees, create personal wealth on exit that can be reinvested into teams that reflect them, and companies that can have a positive impact in turn.

The Fintech Magazine: The world has experienced drastic change and a string of economic, humanitarian and health crises over the past 10 years. How has this impacted the fundraising landscape and what challenges do founders face today?

Nina Wöss: It’s a difficult market at the moment. We focus on pre-seed investing and even at that very early stage we notice rounds that are structured in a way that suits all parties are taking longer to raise and close than in the past. First-time founders are having an especially hard time in the market to raise their first rounds, and many female founders are also first-time founders. To encourage rounds tocome together quickly, we’re becoming increasingly involved in playing the role of the lead investor and bringing co-investors on board, as well as proactively supporting founders to structure their rounds, which is very important to get deals closed.

We’ve also seen founders and investors begin to prioritise revenue-generative businesses that can achieve profitability. Post-COVID, we saw over-hyped business models that, with hindsight, were clearly never going to be profitable. E-scooters come to mind. From an investor perspective, businesses must be inherently scalable, able to reach profitability, and either achieve an exit that makes sense for everyone involved, or establish themselves as a company that can run on its own.

Investors have wised up to misplaced hype and now conduct more thorough due diligence, prolonging the deal process. This all puts a lot of pressure on founders fundraising at the moment. That said, I’m still convinced that good founders will always be able to raise, regardless of their gender, background, or the economic environment.

The Fintech Magazine: Flo Health, a UK-based period tracking app, recently made headlines for becoming Europe’s first femtech unicorn after raising $200million in a Series C round in July 2024, despite being led by two male founders. So, does it matter who’s running the show if the business is investible?

“Men are more likely to be funded, even in the femtech space, because the vast majority of decision-makers on the investor side are men”

Nina Wöss: There is nothing inherently wrong about an all-male founding team, funded mostly by men, running a femtech business. But I think it does highlight bias in the tech ecosystem, especially when men in femtech raise more funds than their female counterparts, despite the fact that 70 per cent of femtech companies are founded by women. While they may be excellent founders, it reinforces what research suggests: that men are more likely to be funded, even in the femtech space, because the vast majority of decision-makers on the investor side are men.

There is an obvious connection between those who get funds and those who distribute them.

The Fintech Magazine: Diverse founding teams are obviously a prerequisite for Fund F. What else do you look for in founders, and what is your process for evaluating a business?

Nina Wöss: Beyond necessary subject knowledge, founder resilience is a priority and can often be gauged from the first interaction. At least one person on the founding team also needs to be an excellent communicator and harness charisma. Not only to pitch the business to an investor, but also gain the trust of future employees and empathise with their customers to sell effectively.

After a positive first interaction with the founder, we assess the market quickly, including the respective market size, and assess if the company is also fundable on a venture scale and whether VC funding would be appropriate for the founding team. Once we’re satisfied with our market research, we then seek to understand the problem the company is solving and the viability of its solution. Ultimately what’s important to us is backing teams that are building solutions with potential to scale and solve the global problems of our lifetime.

For example, financial inclusion was the main reason we included fintech in our investment thesis. How women participate in stock markets, how – and if – they save to build their personal wealth are all examples of global problems that haven’t been solved yet.

The Fintech Magazine: How can finance and financial services industry move beyond diversity tokenism? What practical steps can we take?

Nina Wöss: As a woman, I’m often invited to diversity panels rather than investor panels, even though I’ve been an investor for the majority of my career. We need to give people the opportunity to represent what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, without being the token woman, the token black person, the token person with a different religion, etc. We can effect change by creating content, events, and rooms where, by definition, diversity is already ingrained. Unfortunately, addressing systemic issues takes time.

The Fintech Magazine: What advice would you give someone if they have an idea for a business?

Nina Wöss: Just get started and tell people what you’re building to get feedback. People are often hesitant to talk about their idea, but they should keep in mind that no idea is so special that nobody else in the whole world has thought of it. This can actually be a good thing, because it means your solution is relevant and addresses a problem that resonates with a lot of people.

A founder’s unique advantage is their team and their ability to execute their ideas and bring them to life. Following that, leverage your wider network, from your investors and partners, to employees and customers. At every stage of building a business, it’s the people that make the biggest difference.

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue 33, Page 12-13