Welcome to Women Disrupting Tech.
My name is dear Kanupkas, and on this podcast, I give the women
who work in tech the platform they need to inspire and empower
each other. Join me on a journey into the
world of entrepreneurship, funding biases, and role models
to discover the strategies for success in the tech industry.
In other words, how women can disrupt tech.
Are you ready to listen? Hey, welcome back to Women
Disrupting Tech and thank you for tuning in to episode 124.
Investors like to believe that they're rational, like
data-driven objective. But are they really?
Especially in venture capital, where investors often have very
little to go on, they invest in people who feel familiar and
they back products they can imagine buying themselves.
For the rest, bias fills the gap.
Bias is unbreakable unless we change the system.
And my guest today understands how to do that.
Anika Lammers is a Venture Partner at Borsky Fund, a Dutch
VC that invests in female founded and gender diverse tech
companies. Before becoming an investor at
Borsky Fund, Anika was a founder herself, and that experience
gives her a rare perspective on how the system really works and
how it needs to change. Here are some highlights from
our conversation. First, trust is built on
similarity, and that's where bias begins.
Bias itself isn't bad, it's human, but it needs awareness.
Second, Impact founders often burn out because they carry
their mission like Atlas carries the world, and they may need a
different kind of support. 3rd, it's crucial for founders to
understand the funds vintage. It can make the difference
between having time to execute your mission and being pushed
into a short term exit. Plus, when you're an aspiring
founder, you'll hear why having a business baby shower might
just be the perfect way to celebrate your next launch.
So when you're ready to listen and learn how Anika Lammers
closes the inequality gap by backing female founders with
Porsky Fund, please Welcome to women disrupting tech Anika
Lammers Anika Lammers, welcome to women disrupting tech.
It's an honor to have you. You're the operating partner at
Borsky Fund. Tell us how you got into to that
position and what happened before and what it is like now.
Yeah, super excited and honoured to be here talking with you
today. Dear Kim, I have had a long
journey to get to get to where I am now.
I started my career in finance and venture capital.
So actually I did work in PC for quite a long time for an impact
fund, the corporate venture capital fund for a bank.
And then I decided around my 30s to take the leap of faith and
just go and build my own start up out of thin air.
And that was a really great learning experience, was a lot
of fun to build, did not turn into the great success that I
had envisioned. However, it did help me to be, I
think a much more well-rounded VC now that I'm back in VC.
So yeah, I, I think for me it feels a bit full circle because
a long time ago, in 2012, I, I started a network for female
professionals. It was called the Old Girls
Network. The idea of it was to help women
help women because research showed that a lot of women who
are at the top of organizations were having trouble to help
their younger women get ahead because they felt they had to
work really hard for it themselves.
So, so that these younger women also have to do it by
themselves. So we wanted to change that.
And I remember back then I was like an early 20 year olds girl
and I got to meet all these incredible older, more
professional and experienced women.
And two of them were Lauja and Simone, who actually founded
Borsky Fund. And like, what is it?
More than 12 years later, I'm having a coffee with them and
they sort of ambushed me to come back into BC, so it feels a
little bit like a full circle moment in that sense where I'm
at now. OK.
And and for context, what does operating partner mean?
Yeah, good question. It's a term that comes from
private equity and it's typically people who have
operating experience who can help portfolio companies of the
fund, but also the fund itself with a certain expertise within
Borsky Fund. I'm not sure if all the
listeners are aware with Borsky Fund invests in female founders
and diverse teams across Europe from C to Series A.
And those are typically companies within the health
space, within the circular space and what we call future society.
So it's a lot of different type of topics, but my expertise
within the fund is mostly deal sourcing and deal flow.
I also help a few of the portfolio companies and I also
do some fundraising. So it's quite broad actually
what I'm doing now within the fund.
Yeah, that's that's indeed quite broad.
It's almost a full spectrum. So, so if I understand it
correctly, what you do in terms of deal sourcing is that you are
the person who actually selects distance to pitches etcetera?
Correct. I, I source deals from events
that I go to. By the way, I don't live in the
Netherlands, I live in Portugal, so I am abroad a lot.
And that also helps with I guess getting a broader network talent
in, but also getting international investors to know
about Borsky Fund and of course also the the founders
themselves, right? So yeah, yeah, super exciting.
I wanna plug into free, free things You said first you, you
had this old girls network, probably named after the old
boys network. And what I heard you say is that
older women at the time found it difficult to support younger
versions of themselves. Can you double click on that?
Can you tell us a bit more about how they found it difficult and
why they found it difficult? Because that I see that still,
and it still surprises me a lot. Yeah, I have to say that I don't
personally relate to them that much because I love helping
younger versions of me and younger people in general.
And I think Adriana Huffington has a beautiful quote about
this. It's that there's a special
place in hell for women who don't help other women.
That's a bit bold, but I guess if we feel that like from a
psychological point of view that we have gone through certain
things that made us tough or made us hard, that we feel that
was good for us because we became better from that.
And that we feel that the people who, who follow us, that after
us, they, they also need to go through that because that was
good for me. That's, that's how I got shaped.
So almost like in the sororities and fraternities, you also have
this hierarchical thing where they sort of haze younger ones.
Maybe it's from from this perspective, whereas I feel it
doesn't need to be that way, especially because men are maybe
a little bit more like used to asking for help and quick to get
an intro by a buddy or a friend who intros them through a dad or
an uncle. Yeah, women need to do that more
for each other. Still, this was 12 years ago and
it's still is is sometimes an issue indeed.
Yeah. And the second thing I want to
double down on is so you've been on both sides of the table of
the investment table, both as AVC early, then as a founder and
now again as AVC. So how, how does that shape how
you look at founders today? How does how does that play into
how you look at pictures, for instance?
Or how do you how does that play into how you help founders?
Yeah. I think what was blatantly
obvious for me when I was a founder and pitching to
investors, how I as a quite junior analyst investor before
that was also asking some questions to companies as if I
as AVC have more knowledge or more information or I know it
better because I see more of the market.
Almost putting yourself above the founder.
Whereas having gone through the founder journey, I mean, as a
founder, you breathe your company, it goes under your
skin, It is all you think about day and night in the weekends
and holidays, it doesn't matter. And to think that then if you
see in 1/2 hour meeting can sort of ask that one question that
you haven't thought about that is so arrogant, you know.
So I think it changed me a lot by respecting founders even
more, like I already had fascination and admiration, I
think for for founders before I was a founder myself.
But I am very sure that any question that I can ask in a in
a meeting is something that they have already thought about not
once, not twice, but maybe 100 times.
And maybe they've gotten that question as well.
So I don't pretend to know more about their business or their
company than they know themselves.
So I think feces and founders should be treated equal.
If anything, feces should be founded putting founders more on
a pedestal because they are ultimately the people who are
building the companies and. Who are doing and bringing in
their money? And bringing in their money
indeed do making them get more returns.
Yeah. So let's let's for a moment
shift to the to the startup that you were building.
I believe it was called Picabonds, but can you tell us a
bit more about what that was, how how it started and how you
what you built in the end? Yeah, it started as something
that came really from the heart because my sister, she lives in
Australia, she has now two young daughters and I found it
extremely hard to not be close by them in order to be the aunt
that I wanted to be in my sister's children's lives.
And I saw that grief also in the eyes of my parents who were
first time grandparents back then around COVID time, so they
weren't even able to easily visit Australia.
So I wanted to build a tool that sort of helps families with
young children to connect across distances in a Safeway.
And the first thing I thought of was like a little cuddly plush
bear, like a Teletubby thing with a sort of a screen in the
tummy where you could sort of directly communicate with the
kids. That was I even, I made like a
prototype on a drawing of it. And yeah, I, after a few weeks,
already knew that this is never going to work because I don't
know anything about hardware. I knew from my BC back that that
that's a working capital nightmare as well.
So I already made a kind of quick pivot to a assess like a,
an online app. And I was very much, let's say,
attached to the outcome of that company because I was so
personally involved and invested with it.
And I think that made it also very hard to be emotionally
detached and to be more, let's say, having this experimenting
mindset where you try a lot of different things because it
really felt like, oh, this is my baby.
I don't want it to fail. And yeah, that that sort of, I
don't think was in hindsight the best approach because I know
that, yeah, if you experiment without feeling any ego or
without feeling any attachment to the outcome, I think you'll
get a way higher chance of, of success.
And that's something that I learned.
And in the end. Yeah, that's sort of hard though
I think to approach if, if, if it's your baby, which for for
many start up founders you included and probably if I would
be a start up founder, me included as well.
It's something you're so emotionally attached to that
failing hurts. Yeah, it does.
I once had a chat with Nolden. I don't know if you remember
him, but he's the founder of We Transfer and he was building
something similar at the time when I was building pick a bond
and he was super detached to the outcome.
So he was like really just building it.
And if it doesn't fail, well, he said you win some you dim sum.
So he had like this super casual feeling about the failing of
that company, whereas I, I really felt like the pressure
was very high because I really wanted it to succeed, not just
for my own benefit and my own private situation with my
family, but also for my investors and that sort of
immense responsibility. It's sort of, it becomes a sort
of a pressure that makes you less playful and less
experimenting and I think in the end also less successful.
So in that sense, the being sort of detached to the outcome is
definitely a better, I think a better mindset to be successful
in startup life. Yeah, it's, it's probably more
productive in the end. But as I said, I can imagine
it's more it's, it's really difficult.
Do you think that's also specifically a female trait,
That they're female founders are more engaged, more deeply
emotionally attached to what they're building?
Yeah, I've seen that already. Before I worked for Borsky, I
worked for Rubio, an impact VC, and I noticed that if you go to
any impact event, the founder ratio of female founders versus
male founders is much higher. Like women just like building
impactful start-ups much more. And what I also learned there is
that if you're building an impactful startup, you tend to
place your own, how do you say benefit below the benefit of the
company because you feel like you're doing it for the greater
good. And this is ultimately very
detrimental for the business because as a business, you're
super dependent on the founders health and also mental health
and the founder not getting burned out, right?
So we noticed back then already within Rubio that a lot of these
impactful founders were burning out because they were feeling
like they had to do this heavy lifting and carry the weight of
the world on their shoulders because they're building
something impactful. And and they they did it at all
cost, including their own health.
Yeah, I think that is 100% true. What you're just saying that
women build more impactful companies and also as a result
of that, given impactful founders burn out faster than
non impact founders because they feel that they're doing it for
the greater good, has some sort of, yeah, not great correlation.
Let's put it like that. Now, but and how does that help
you in your current role then, because I can imagine if you
know that it also helps you, let's say coach people on on on
how to yeah, how to take care of their mental health, how to
avoid teeth pitfalls. Yeah, As a matter of fact, I
started a passion project next to my, my normal works, let's
say, which I call the VC coach, where I also coach venture
capital investors on how to, yeah, recognize this and how to,
yeah, make aligned decisions, not just aligned with their
investors and getting a higher return on investment.
But really, yeah, thinking about the power that we have as VCs,
the the enormous amounts of money that VCs are sitting on,
and it's really shapes our future because we make the
decisions. We know where the money will
flow in the in the future. And that comes with a really
high responsibility also for those VCs to make aligned
decisions, not just with their mind, their heart, their guts,
their body, but also for the planet and humanity.
And yeah, I think it's really important to help.
Feces, to be more perceptive also towards their founders and
the people that they're investing in.
To not just look at it from a rational point of view, like is
this a good business case? But also to be more human and to
be perceptive to what founders need and how you can actually
help them and coach them indeed. So that is very, very fulfilling
1. Yeah, I can that I can imagine.
Do you also coach startup founders on that or is this is
this a pure VC play? My core focus is on VC
investors, but I do catch some founders in the slipstream of
that because in the end, I love helping humans.
And in that sense, for me, making their dreams come true or
making their objectives come true, it doesn't matter if it's
AVC or if it's a founder. The thing is just that I do feel
that VCs indirectly have way more power 'cause they, like I
said, I said, sit on such enormous streams of money that I
feel my impact can be bigger by coaching them.
And there's already so many founder coaches out there, so.
Yeah, that's a crowded space for sure.
So that's I understand question that was still lingering a bit
in my mind is, is the following. So if, if, if you're pitching,
many founders sort of have the feel that they have to quote UN
quote, perform confidently, so they have to overstate
projections, etcetera in front of investors because the
investors expect the the hockey stick to go in up into almost
heaven, at least VC heaven. That's call it that.
Is there something that you do or that we can all do to change
that a bit to make it more? Because I, I think going back to
our, our previous discussion, part of that pressure comes from
the expectation that there is this hockey stick.
And so if you take down the expectation a bit, you also give
room, let's say as an investor, but also give room to yourself
as a founder to let's say, not, not push yourself to the limit.
But I was wondering how you look at that?
I think your question is really like, should we change the
system or should we change like the female founders, right?
So I think it's probably a little bit of both because I
mean, how I approach female founders is already, I think a
little bit different compared to many other VC investors.
Because I noticed when I first opened a meeting that founders
can be even like nervous, you know, like, oh, scary PC.
And I always tried to make them feel a little bit safe by just
having a little bit of small talk, have a bit of chit chat,
like just asking them some questions to make them feel a
little bit more comfortable and make them feel like we're we're
equals. What also helps in my case, of
course, is just literally saying that I've been also in their
sheets and shoes as a former founder.
But I think that sort of helps them to feel a little bit more
comfortable. And then the second part is
indeed like, how should we change as VCs?
Like looking at companies, Obviously there's a certain
model that VCs tend to follow where some are, let's say,
Unicorn chasers, where one company needs to pay back the
entire fund. And you already see a bit of a
change in that, that some VCs are saying, no, we're not
Unicorn chasers. Actually, we prefer to bet on a
number of horses that the fill rate is lower, but on average it
sort of gets to the return that we need to have our investors
satisfied. And I'm, I'm sure you've heard
of the term zebras, which are more like the impactful versions
of the unicorns. Yeah, It's good to figure out
who are those VCs that are not chasing unicorns, but are more
interested in building sustainable companies that maybe
have a lower fail rate, but also maybe less extreme high returns.
And they are out there, they're your impact funds, some Angel
collectives. You know, there's, there's a
number of them out there that are seeing that this is not
healthy the way the system is built and that we're, let's say,
pushing a lot of companies over the edge that could have been
really sustainable, great companies on the longer term.
But because, yeah, we are short term focused as VCs, they have
to be pushed to this extreme level and that is then sort of
either up into the the Unicorn space or out like dead.
So yeah, from a long term perspective, it would make sense
to change that hockey stick for sure.
Yeah. And and now that you mention it
also having been and still being an investor myself, not in
startups, but more like like normal quote UN quote
investment. I would think that spreading
your money over different horses which have a good chance of
success actually pays back a bigger fund in the end than just
chasing that one Unicorn which may or may not be in that
portfolio. Yeah, Yeah, I agree.
But you know, VCs are often limited to their 10 year
timelines, which is what investors want to invest in.
And that is, yeah, creating a sort of short term push, right,
Because yeah, you need to exit those companies before a certain
deadline, if you will. So there's a trend where you see
more continuity funds that means that that they're investing
maybe past the 10 year terms. They're also Evergreen funds
that are just they're just investing and whenever is the
right time for the company to exit, they're not pushing for an
exit, but they are they are promising their investors a
certain out. So yeah, they're it's changing,
but obviously changing slow. Yeah, change is always slow.
And well, let me just ask you this, is VC also sort of old
fashioned in that sense, so also sticking to old headages?
I think VC is not an industry that's been a long around for a
very long time, right? I think only, I don't know,
20-30 years ago, I think there's this story that it once started
with the whale hunting that they needed to finance whale hunting
and sort of pulled money and that's how we see started.
It's not, not that all of an industry and you do see some
funds being a little bit more innovative.
There's a trend in US obviously, that funds are broadening their
mandates. They are investing, for example,
also in nonprofits or they are investing more in what we call
in the Netherlands, M Cape and yeah, and there's some funds
that are partially investing in blockchain, Bitcoin kind of
crypto things. And yeah, you see, you see this
happening. But yeah, I don't see that much
innovation, if that's what you're saying.
Maybe it is a bit of an old industry in the end, yeah.
Now, that exactly that is what I meant, because what I've been
seeing is that at some point VC sort of decided, OK, this is
going to be the model and they just just stick to it and they
don't get it sometimes feels like they have blinders all.
Yeah. So anyway, I wanted to move to
Borsky because you're operating partner at Borsky Fund.
You said that you invest in female led companies with growth
potential and in diverse teams. 2 questions about that.
One is why specifically because I think Borsky, the name Borsky
is, is one of the reasons why you invest in women.
And the, the, the second question on the back of that is
how do you look at how does the selection process?
What does it look like? Yeah.
Well, I don't have to tell you, of course, that less than 2% I
think of the capital goes to female founders and less than
10% I think of the senior investment professionals are
female. So why we invest in gender
diverse teams is because we want to reduce the gender inequality
gap. I think there's a lot of money
that we're missing out on. I once heard the lady from Code
Vey say, I think it was 30 billion that we miss out on
annually as a society through the gender inequality gap.
So from a societal perspective, a lot of innovations don't even
get to see the day of light because these are, for example,
femtech investments that are really hard to get funding from
traditional PCs. So I think that is a clear
answer to the why. And for those listening who
don't know, what does Borsky stand for?
It's named after Joanna Borsky, who was the first female Dutch
investor who bailed out the Nate Lancer Bank and I think a few
other banks like AB and Amro in the process as well.
She inherited money from her rich husband and started
investing with that. So with that example, we also
want to invest alongside other female investors in female
founders and in female innovation.
So that's what we call our triple effect thesis.
Our selection process looks very similar to other feces.
And I always say that we don't invest in founders because they
are women, but because they are the best.
And by the way, they also have diverse teams because we know
that diverse teams outperform non diverse teams.
We know that they outperform on revenue generation.
So they tend to be more financially sustainable and
research also shows that they give better returns.
So why are we not investing in them?
It's such a weird, I weird thing if you think about it from an
investment opportunity perspective.
So we really see like an under under represented opportunity
that other investors are not spotting.
And I personally also think that you have to sometimes be a
little bit mad or genius or maybe a little bit bit of both
if you're a female founder and you you're building because it's
the barriers are much higher than for their male
counterparts. So yeah, at the moment I think
it's a great opportunity. ASC, by the way, moving needle
moving in terms of female founders getting more funding
over time. I wish that was true.
Because of the work that Borsky and and probably also other
female VCs are doing. It is moving, but it is moving
very slow. I think less than 1% went to
FICI, less than 1% of FICI capital went to female founders
a little while ago. Now it's like less than 2%.
So it's still very low, but it's like 100% increase, you know.
So in that sense, yeah, it it is moving, but it's moving slow and
it's moving way too slow. I believe that without Borsky in
the world, even less money would flow to female founders and that
would just be detrimental. So I think it's a really great
trend that other VCs are now also more conscious of this,
trying to reduce their bias and also trying to invest more in
female founders. But unfortunately, it's still
very much needed that we are in the world.
And I hope that let's say in five or ten years, it will just
be a nice to have to have a fund that invests in female founders.
And it's just nice to have like minded people investing in each
other and having this like like female community.
But in the end, I hope that it's just not needed anymore one day,
you know? Is the is the goal of Porsche
also to make itself obsolete then over time?
I would love for it to not be needed.
Like I said, I think for any nonprofit, the goal is to be
obsolete over time, right? If you have, let's say a war
child or Save the Children in the end, you would want that no,
no child is in a war zone and and that you've done a great job
when that is the case. And then you can sort of say,
OK, that was a great day. Let's let's end it now.
So in the end, of course, like that would be great if we don't
need to fight for female equality over time.
Yeah. But if it moves as slow as it is
now, we we will be needed for for a while as well.
So if I'm informed correctly, you actually have a diverse team
at Porsche. So it's not all women doing the
investment, but also the the the board etcetera.
Do do you see bias still in how you decide about investments or
has that sort of smoothened out because you're more more
balanced team because you've been in VC before, It will be
also. Yeah, I love that question
because you would say, oh, a female gender lens fund then
obviously the bias will be lower.
I guess so. But I think it is also human to
be biased. Like we are not robots.
And obviously we also know from statistics that women are more
likely to invest in other women. So in that sense, that is
already also kind of like a bias, right?
So we. Does that does that assumption
hold true though? Does that assumption hold true?
In what sense? Well, do women actually really
invest more in women? Well, yeah, I think the research
shows that women are more likely to invest in other women.
So there is already that kind of bias.
And that is also understandable, right?
Like if you're investing your money, you want to trust the
other person. And trust is based on
similarities because if this person looks and behaves like
me, then they must be a little bit like me.
And I trust myself. So makes sense to invest in
them, right? I think we definitely are also
biased like any other human being but I think more in a
positive way. And we still need to call out
each other on this by creating also a psychological safe
environment where we can call out each other when we see that
we are biased. For example, recently we had a
company that is in the make up space like mascara and yeah,
yeah, these kind of things. And I am not a typical customer
for them because I don't really, I'm not really into makeup, to
be honest. I'm a typical Dutch woman who
just puts on always the same mascara and that's it, you know?
And it's then also hard for me to sort of see the business case
because I'm not the target, you know, and I really need to step
over my own bias and sort of interview to other people and
how do you look at this and, you know, these kind of things?
Because it is. Yeah.
Then then I am also biased, right?
If I'm saying, well, I wouldn't use it, so I'm not investing
because I don't see the use of it, you know, So I don't know if
that makes. Sense is, is it difficult to
make the distinction between an investable or company versus
company that you would buy from? Because essentially that's what
I'm hearing you say. I would not buy from this
company, therefore I will not invest in it. 100% that's
exactly right. So N is one right.
You shouldn't look at a company because you are a potential
investor, because if that would happen, that's also why a lot of
these femtech investments are not getting funded, because the
traditional male investor doesn't want to invest in a
tampon or a company that helps solve endometriosis or cervical
cancer or these kind of things because, well, that's not their
problem, you know, And there's a huge market for all those
things. Yeah.
Just because you, as AVC don't see the use because you're not
experiencing the problem, doesn't mean that market's not
there. Yeah, look at the numbers.
Yeah. But then just that also what I'm
hearing you say is that you confirm that it is difficult for
investors in general to see OK to invest in a company that they
wouldn't don't picture themselves being a customer of.
Yes, yes. And I think as an investor, we
all claim to be very rational and looking at the data, but I
know for a fact that a lot of the decisions are very much got
an intuition based. And it's also good to use your
how we say in the Netherlands, Buddha for stunts.
So your sanity mind check if you know if you know what I mean.
But your gut feeling? Yeah.
But at the same time you need to open those blinds, like you
said, those horse blinds by looking around and asking around
and not just being myopic in that sense.
OK. And that that's actually also
how you do deal dealt with this particular situation with the
makeup company that you started asking a lot of people like,
hey, I'm not a customer, but tell, tell me what you think.
So how exactly how how many people then do you talk to?
Is this just friends of you that that you run into Like, hey, I'm
looking at a company or yeah. It's a, it's a number of experts
that we have in our network, people who do know about this
market. So we have like a, an outer
layer of, of borsky fund of people with different
expertises. And it's also a matter of
looking at the numbers, like what are the key metrics of the
company and what do they say? Because I can have an opinion,
but my former Co founder always has an opinion or like opinions
are like assholes. Everybody has 1.
So it's not worth anything. You know, you need to look at
the data and what does the data tell you?
So it's a combination of talking to experts, looking at the data,
and then asking around. Also a little bit in yeah, for
my friends who I know that are into this topic, like, would you
use this? And how do you, how do you view
this? And yeah, that's how I come to
my own conclusions. OK cool.
So one more thing about this part.
I recently spoke to Marion Spear and Simona von Bishtfeld from
Femstart. Marion mentioned something
really interesting to me is that the only way we're going to
change funding of female founders, if we just flood the
system with female founders to make it so normal to have a
female founder on board that it will be just a normal thing and
you can't really work around it anymore as as AVC.
How do you look at that? Yeah, that's one approach.
I think getting more female investors would also help.
As I said, like now 10% of the senior VCs are are female.
So that would also help a lot. I think that would also result
in change metrics. Because if you think about it
from this perspective that I mentioned before that at the
point, at the at this point in time for so many female
founders, starting a business, maybe combining that with
starting a family is such a big barrier that only the crazy and
the bold ones and the genius ones are doing it.
And you're leaving out all the the the normal ones to say.
Ordinary human beings. Ordinary human beings.
Yeah, exactly. So I think now like I said, the
statistic is definitely that female Co founded companies tend
to outperform their male counterparts.
If the barriers would be decreased for female founders,
maybe that also will impact that statistic.
But that's also fine, right? Like it would be, it would be so
much better world if it would be more equal.
So yeah, let's let's help those women start all the all those
companies that they have always dreamed about.
Because I think not starting is really truly failing, right?
I think if you look back at life and oh, I wish I had dot, dot,
dot, you know, like I wish I had started this company or I wish I
had pursued that dream. Like regrets, I think are the
worst thing you can have in life and that will chase you until
you're deathbed. So we should really help those
women pursue their dreams, whether it's a successor or not.
Like just as simple as as it is for men to do it.
And, and what I wanted to say also, I think when I was like 30
years old and I started my, my former startup, all my friends,
they were starting families and they were having baby showers
and they were, you know, getting presents because they had their
babies born and heard this quote once.
And I really like the idea is that if we have a female friend
who's starting a business, we should organize a baby shower
for her, but around the business and give her like a Notion
subscription or a tool, you know, that she can use to
actually make this baby have a successful life and celebrate
that more in society as well. So yeah, let's do that.
Yeah, that's a beautiful idea. I'll, I'll for sure mention that
in the blog. Yeah.
I mean, I really love that. Let's let's have business baby
showers because the men are getting those subscriptions as
well in some way, shape or form. So why not women?
So I want to talk a bit about the more structural side of the
of this whole funding the ecosystem.
So we talked about getting more female founders, getting more
women to decide on the investment.
So the senior VC side of it, are there any other things that we
need to change? Do we need policies, education,
capital, quota to to support getting more women women?
Founders getting funded, all of the above.
But I think from a policy perspective that would make such
a big change because if you look at it now all my female friends
that are let's say freelancers or are having a start up and
they are also thinking about family planning.
If they need to have maternity leave, they they don't have
anything to rely on, right. So that is just that is already
such a big barrier. I think if we could solve this
issue like from from a governmental perspective, that
would be already so, so much better.
And there are obviously like countries that are doing that
much better than the Netherlands.
Yeah, for example, Iceland, I think Sweden is also known for
these. Great parental policies, but
that's definitely something that is important.
I know somebody who's very passionate about that.
You should maybe interview her as well.
Elena is her name. She has a initiative to change
it more from from a policy level in the Netherlands.
I think from an education perspective, it would be really
great if we teach young girls early on what it is like to be
an entrepreneur. Maybe even have them create
their own little company as an assignment for school so that it
becomes way less of a barrier and they learn this sort of
playful mindset. And that's OK to fail because I
think a lot of young girls are really afraid to fail.
I really liked the book from Yannakanisa Project Prep that
you probably have met or have heard of, where it's a story of
a girl who creates her first fashion app.
I mean, it would have been great if it wasn't a fashion app, but
let's take it one step at a time.
Getting more girls in STEM, you know, like in technical areas,
would be very, very great. And then, yeah, indeed, I think
ultimately nobody wants quotas, right?
Like nobody wants to get a position or get investment just
because of their gender. But unfortunately, we are in a
situation where like not doing it is not moving the needle
enough. So I do think that those are
also needed. So short answer, all of the
above that you just mentioned. OK.
And would that, so let's look at the quota for a minute because
and this is just me picking your brain.
So would that be like moving towards 10% of any VC portfolio
needs to be partially women owned business?
I think 10% would be, in my humble opinion, like a minimum.
It's just really sad number, isn't it?
Like if you think about it, it's just yeah, but if you if it's a
quotum, then I get that you want to set the bar low because you
kind of hope that it will be higher anyway.
But just imagine a room with 10 guys and then just one token
woman in there, you know, like it's just feels like, man, I
wouldn't want to be in that room, you know?
So I think it would be so great if we if we wouldn't need the
quote as at all. So yeah, there's no, there's no
good answer for yes, 10% is, is what we need.
It's really, yeah. I wish it was just it, it I wish
it doesn't matter. But it it it matters.
Yeah, no, I did that. I understand.
But it's, yeah, I was more looking like, like should it be
part of, should it be set on a portfolio level or maybe on a
fund level even or even on, I don't know.
So that was more my question. And the 10% to your point is
really low indeed, especially if you're talking about mixed
funds, because I think the proportion of mixed teams is now
way above that 10% threshold. So it doesn't really make sense
to to set it this low. Yeah, exactly.
So by by the way, what is the threshold for Porsche to start
investing in diverse company? How how many women do need to be
on the cap table? Or how many how much percent of
the cap capital needs to? Be we have a minimum of 30% of
the founder shares. So we like to have 1/3 of the
founders have shares in a company, but that is an informal
rule. Formally, our rule is a minimum
of 5% of the cap table because of course there's also maybe
past funding rounds that made the founders dilute.
Sometimes we invest in companies that raised 10s of millions of
dollars and then obviously like the founders are diluted already
quite a lot. But what's more important is the
balance. Like what's sad to see sometimes
is if there's two or three founders and there's, let's say
one female founder and that structurally she has less shares
than her male counterparts. And we like to challenge also
when we see that like why is it like that?
Is it because the men that invested cash and she did not,
she needed a salary or whatever, you know, like there needs to be
a good reasoning for this. And ideally we want to see equal
shares between whether it's a female or male founder.
Yeah, yeah. That I can imagine because and,
and quite quite frankly, I don't think it makes any sense to
unless a person has joint like after another after an
investment round, then maybe it makes sense to to give them a
little less because there's less to be given anyway.
But then on on the founder level, if you start by giving
women less of the cap table to begin with, I think you're on
the wrong foot. Exactly.
And also the other way around. So I also have experienced where
a female founder had 98% of the founder share and her male
counterpart had 2%. And I also started the dialogue
there with the company. What is the story there?
Why is it so imbalanced? And yeah, I think that's also a
healthy discussion to have because ideally you'd have an
equal share between founders. Yeah, true.
I want to move to a bit more the practicalities of female
founders and female investors. So you you probably hear a lot
of pitches, hear a lot of stories from from start up
founders. What are things that resonate
with you as in OK, this this sort of lifts lifts up my ears
if I would be talking about my cats.
And what do founders often forget to mention that is
important? To you, for me, the most
important thing that sticks is a good founder story.
I think as humans we are suckers for stories and we've been
storytelling ever since. We were sitting behind a like a
campfire and sharing stories with each other.
And I think the why of the founder, in other words, like
the product market and founder fit is something that really
sort of lifts up my ears. I can still reproduce the
founder story of a company that I invested in like 8 years ago
with, with Rubio because I thought those were two kick ass
female founders and I that that story of how they founded that
company and why they both wanted to find that found that company
together. I think it's so sticky.
So I think that also helps you through all the the rough
patches. So I think there's also this
other fund in in Belgium, I forgot the name, but they really
believe that trauma makes a good founder.
It sounds really. Sounds really horrible, but
yeah. But if you have experienced some
sort of real trauma or pain in life and you really want to
solve that problem for the world, that is going to make you
extremely resilient as a founder to to solve it.
So it all really it all links to this founder story that I'm
saying. So I think if you're pitching
and you have. No, no, no.
Please continue. If you're pitching and you
haven't spoken to a pitch coach, like who can help you with your
storytelling, I think this is really something valuable not
just for now, but maybe also for the rest of your life because it
will make it so much more interesting to listen to and
also more sticky. Yeah, What makes a good why for
you? If something comes from the
heart. So I, I'm a sucker for love
stories. So I think if somebody like
recently, they explained how their child was hit by a very
rare disease and this was kind of game changer because this
person then started this company that helps young children with
that certain disease. That is something that you're
like, wow, you know, like, I really understand the pain
there. And yeah, that really helps to,
like I said, through the ups and the downs to pull you through.
And something I do want to mention is that founders also
sometimes overlook the fact that there's a lot of internal
politics as well right within funds.
So it's really about not just the right idea or the right
person, but it's very much about about also the right time.
So sometimes if fun, they are in a certain lifetime of their fund
or they need to do a deal in a certain geography, or they they
have this personal experience where the the partner of the
fund just let's say, had this own problem with their child
being sick and then recognizes themselves in this problem with
founders. I would say don't get
discouraged when you get a no from investors.
It does not some, it doesn't always link to how good your
pitch is or how good your company is or how you good you
are as a founder because there's a lot of politics around
investment, unfortunately, and not always the the money flows
to the best founder with the best idea.
But it's sometimes also very much about timing and and those
other factors. Yeah.
How can people select the right feces to talk to?
Because I I think you need to be in the right vertical.
You need to be in the right, let's say, funding stage.
Those are the sort of obvious drivers where you don't want to
make mistakes. But how do you find out what,
let's say let's take that fund stage and the geography spread.
How do you find that out? Can you?
Usually would be listed on the website of the fund and there's
a a lot of lists going around of female funds investing at
certain stages and investing in certain geographies and
investing with certain mandates. So that is not I think super
hard to find out. I think what's really hard to
find out is value match. So you want to find a fund where
you align on the values of what you stand for as a company and
maybe as a founder and what their fund for stands for.
And that is really hard to find out.
The only way you can find out is through the talks and with the
by interviewing maybe some of the founders that they have
already invested in as a reference call.
So definitely recommend. Using the power of your peer
network, other, let's say female founders or founders who have
already raised funding from a certain VC and can tell you the
true story, what is it like to work with this VC?
And then of course, it's also quite personal, like one partner
with an NVC might be totally different to another partner
with an NVC. So it's definitely important to
test that. And sometimes it changes also a
little bit over time. Definitely value alignment would
be something that I would encourage you to test.
For example, also fund timeline like the vintage years, what
they call it of a fund. For example, Borsky fund has a
fund vintage of 2021. That's four years ago.
So every company that we invest in now needs to work towards an
exit within five years. And it's really important that
you ask that question when you get investment from AVC because
it gives you your deadline of when or am I, am I needed to
work towards an exit And maybe I don't want to work towards an
exit within five years, maybe I need 10 years, then this fund is
maybe not the right fund for you, you know.
No. So.
Yeah, and that is exactly the answer that I was looking for.
Do do you by the way, ask about vintage as part of the
conversations that you have? Is that a question that you can
just ask AVC? Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, always ask. It's not a sensitive topic for
VCs. Like they can tell you if it's
not already public on some sort of crunch base or public page.
OK, so, oh, I didn't actually know that it was also public
data. OK, but that's good to know as
well. OK, So I want to look towards
the future both for the, let's say the startup scene and Borsky
itself. What does what success look like
for you? For Borsky?
Success for me would be that a gender lens fund is not a must
have, but it's a nice to have because women just like being in
the room with each other and now it's unfortunately very much a
must have. So that would be great success.
And for the broader startup scene, I would say that feces
and founders consider each other as equal partners and that feces
are also more used to openly discussing, for example, their
struggles, which is now all behind closed doors because
feces, they don't transparently communicate anything about their
failures externally, except that you sometimes hear that the
company goes bankrupt, but you never hear VC them talk about
that. It's usually the company that
communicates these kind of things.
And I would like for the VC community to have a bit more of
a founder mindset where it's OK to learn and it's OK to fail.
It's OK to share more about that because that makes as all be
better and be more successful and I think coaching can really
help with that. So if you have somebody who has
your back, as we see, I think you are also able to stand more
in your own best self, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, How can men contribute to these goals?
The the man in VC. Well, I think what you're doing
is obviously quite great. So more dear friends, please.
I think listening, not judging is already a great first step.
And recently I was on a panel, I think you were at that event as
well with Herman from Curiosity VC.
And I think become unconscious of your own unconscious bias
through bias training or through indeed just asking and listening
and being more, more perceptive is already great help.
And yeah, creating a a safe environment for for that.
That is also I think something that would be yeah, would be
very good. So openly asking how can we do
better? That would be all righty great.
Cool, that's ended there. Anika Lammers, thank you very
much for an amazing interview. Really enjoyed this.
If people want to connect with you and learn more about Borski,
where would you like to send them?
They can always send me an e-mail at anika@borskifund.com
and there's also my LinkedIn page that you can follow.
I'm very active on LinkedIn. I also have a coaching website,
thevccoach.com, so feel free to check me out there.
Cool. And we'll include those links in
the show notes. Anika, thank you once more.
Listeners, thank you very much for listening and until the next
episode, keep being awesome. Well, that's it for episode 124.
Women Disrupting Tech with Anika Lammers on how she closes the
inequality gap by backing female founders with Porsky Fund.
Anika and I hope that you found our conversation as insightful
and engaging as we intended it to be.
And if you have any questions for Anik, please share them in
the comments on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
I'll make sure you'll receive an answer.
When you want to connect with Anika and learn more about
Porsky Funds and her new initiative, the VC Codes, please
check the links in the show notes.
As usual, you can find to show notes at Women Disrupting
Tactile Block via the link in the caption.
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