Welcome to our #95 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we spolight a new female-led business angel group, called Mint Ventures based in Scotland.
Angel investment continues to be dominated by men and in large part explains why women entrepreneurs struggle to raise funding for their startup.
Don’t forget to listen to The Purse Podcast with Dr Kate Levinson, a PhD, Marriage & Family Therapist (MFT) and author. We talk about emotional currency and how women can build a healthy relationship with money. Please enjoy!
You can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Jana
Launch of female-led business angel group
How women can become angel investors and support women entrepreneurs
Angel investment continues to be dominated by men and male networks: less than 15% of women are angel investors in the UK.
However, a new female-led business angel group has launched in Scotland, called Mint Ventures which aims to redress the balance, as reported by The Scotsman.
Based on research by its partner organisation Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES), the access to capital for women entrepreneurs continues to be the biggest barrier to starting and scaling their business.
Here are some stats from their research:
Women start their businesses with 53% less capital than men do
Women ask for 30% less funding than men
As a result, women ‘are often hugely under-capitalised from the outset’
And only 14% of all capital raised is going to women-led businesses.
Shocking, right?
This is because women entrepreneurs are up against gender bias from mostly male investors who undervalue women founders and the markets they focus on.
It is why we need more women investors, who are ‘gender aware’, appreciate female-led innovation, have capital to invest and are keen (to learn how) to allocate capital to female-led startups.
And no, this is not philanthropy.
According to key research, women founders outperform their male peers. In other words, investors will see a much higher return on their capital.
How Mint Ventures will invest
According to Gillian Fleming, chief executive of Mint Ventures who recognises these barriers:
“We are on a mission to change that through our educational program to support more women to become angel investors and invest in diverse companies with purpose.”
They will provide a “comprehensive” educational, development and networking programme.
Women members will train for six months to qualify before they make their first investment.
Invest in under-represented sectors including creative industries, retail, and food and drink, which it says are often of more interest to women.
All companies will need to demontrate a social, ethical or environmental purpose and have clear environmental, social, and governance goals.
A low minimum investment: £2,000 (even though the 20 founding women members of the group will focus their investments in the critical £50,000 to £250,000 funding gap).
What next?
Listen to The Purse Podcast with Sarah Turner about how women can invest in startups.
Listen to The Purse Podcast with Julia Elliott-Brown about female entrepreneurship, raising funding and more.
News in Brief
Financial news
Stock markets have been on a roller coaster this week as investors are trying to figure out what the new Covid variant Omicron means for the pandemic, and markets going forward.
Oil price fell sharply as Opec+ agrees to increase output in January. Opec+ has agreed to go ahead with its planned January oil output rise of 400,000 barrels per day.
US Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell has said that the term ‘transitory inflation’ should be retired. And the Fed Reserve is considering whether to wrap up the taper of asset purchases months sooner than previously planned.
US economy adds 210,000 jobs vs 550,000 (which was expected). At the same time, the jobless rate fell more than expected, to 4.2% from October’s 4.6%, while economists had expected a dip to 4.5%
Bank of England (BoE) policymaker Michael Saunders said that he wanted more information about the impact of the new Omicron strain, before deciding how to vote on interest rates this month.
UK wealth soars on back of rising house prices, pensions and savings. Households’ net worth grew to £11.2tn in 2020, an increase of 8.4% during a year in which the pandemic hammered the economy.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs
The crypto market dropped 17% on Saturday. As much as $2.4bn was liquidated earlier (on Saturday), which is the largest depreciation since September.
Bitcoin dropped below $56,000 during the week but dropped again to approx $47,000 on Saturday morning. (See the current bitcoin price). Investors seem concerned at the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant, hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve and regulation in private cryptocurrencies.
On Saturday morning, Bitcoin dropped 9K in an hour on spot market selling and El Salvador buys the dip again.
Etherum dropped by over 15% on Saturday to below $3,700. ETH had risen as high as $4,800 in the week, a close to it’s current all-time high ($4,850).
Ethereum is defying broad underperformance in cryptocurrencies, with its recent price gains reflecting a surge of interest in smart contract platforms that are being rapidly co-opted by the nonfungible token (NFT) boom. (See the current ether price).
Rithholtz Wealth Management and Wisdom Tree launch crypto index for investment advisors. The Index holds 36% bitcoin, 20% ether and 4% each of 11 other cryptoassets that provide exposure to the broader crypto ecosystem.
NFTs and crypto culture takes over Miami as Art Basel goes digital. Crypto-native art is now taking over the annual Art Basel event as digital art collectors swarm the city.
Adidas enters metaverse with Bored Ape Yacht Club ethereum NFT (an emerging vision of a future internet in which users interact in shared 3D worlds with their owned NFT collectibles).
Metaverse land sales on ethereum, solana top $100m in one week. The wave of attention towards virtual worlds like The Sandbox and Decentraland started with Facebook’s rebranding to Meta.
The Purse Podcast
We cover the following in our conversation:
Emotional currency
Women's relationship with money
Changing money beliefs
Racism and impact
ESG investing
And more
Please enjoy! Listen on all podcasting platforms including Spotify & iTunes.
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We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and @janicka.
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The Purse provides content for informational purposes only, we do not recommend products or services or provide investment advice. Please do your own research or speak to a financial advisor.
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