INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Sarah Kunst has filed to raise $10 million for her debut venture capital fund, Cleo Capital
According to Axios, the firm will give cash to female entrepreneurs who will act as scouts.Scouts look for viable early-stage startups for
firms to invest in and then receive a cut of the profits on the investments
Kunst, pictured above, is a scout for Sequoia; it unclear if that will change now that she running her own firm
She also the founder of ProDay, a fitness tech startup that hadraised at least $500,000 from angel investors, including Arielle Zuckerberg,
but folded earlier this year.We&ve reached out to Kunst for comment.Cleo isn&t the only female-focused fund with which Kunst is involved
She joined Bumble as a senior adviser in February, and earlier this month, the popular dating app announced the launch of a VC fund
targeting early-stage startups with women at the helm
Kunst is co-leading fund strategy alongside Bumble COO, Sarah Jones Simmer
Bumble announces a fund to invest in women-led businessesIt no surprise Kunst is working to deploy capital to the next generation of
She been actively championing female and minority founders at least for the last several years and was one of the most vocal in the industry
during tech #MeToo moment
She spoke to The New York Times last year about her experience with 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, who sent her inappropriate messages
on Facebook in 2014.McClure followed up with a public apology in the form of a Medium post titled &I&m a creep
I&m sorry,& and shortly after resigned from the accelerator.Kunst spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt last year a few months after The New York
Times piece was published
On a panel focused on diversity in tech, she called out tech founders for a lack of diverse hiring practices: &I do this crazy thing that is
hiring people that aren&t just white dudes
It works really great — you guys should try it,& she said.In 2017,only 11.3 percent of partners at VC firms were women, according to
Female founders, meanwhile, raised just 2.2 percent of all venture funding.On the bright side, it looks like more women are fundraising on
the other side of the table
Women-run VC firms have gathered nearly $2.5 billion so far this year, putting them on pace to surpass last year decade high of $3.2 billion
That includes Cowboy Ventures& $95 million fundraiseand Aspect Ventures& $181 million sophomore vehicle
Cowboy is led by Aileen Lee, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins, while Aspect is co-led by former Draper Fisher Jurvetson managing director
Jennifer Fonstad and former Accel partner Theresia Gouw.
