❎ Issue #4: XX Marks the Spot
❎ Issue #4: XX Marks the Spot
The Athenas and female Sagehens are leading the way!
💬 Welcome to issue #4 of Between the Lines
Another Friday, and another issue of Between the Lines coming to your inbox. 📬 Excited to share with you all this week exactly how impressive the Claremont female alumni network is…..TLDR: Claremont female-founders raise bank and they’re solving some of the most important problems of our time. 🤑 🦹♀️
Enjoy reading, take a look at who is hiring, and catch up on conversations that are happening in the Claremont community, all in this issue of Between the Lines!
My Best, Miles
📊 6th Street Stats: XX Marks the Spot
Authors: Josh Tatum & Miles Bird
Would you believe me if I told you that the Claremont Colleges graduate some of the most successful female startup founders of any other university? Would you believe me if I told you that Claremont female entrepreneurs raise more VC dollars than any other university on average? Would you believe that they raise almost double that of the next most prolific contenders beating out Harvard, Northwestern, and Yale female founder communities? You probably wouldn’t believe me….but that’s why you read, Between the Lines.
Over the last decade, numerous analyses have shown that female-founded startups exceed their male-founded counterparts in some of the most important metrics. Early-stage VC firm First Round Capital ran a study in 2015 that surfaced that the female-founded companies in their portfolio performed 63% better than the strictly male-founded companies in their portfolio. Consulting firm BCG also ran a study in 2018 that concluded that female-founded companies generate almost double the amount of revenue per venture dollar raised than only male-founded companies
. Data from these studies and others continue to show that female founders can be a crucial ingredient for startup companies’ success. Our female Claremont alums are no exception, and they are truly killing the game more than most.
From 2006 through 2018, Claremont female founders raised $40M per company on average and in aggregate, more than a billion dollars. The average amount of $40M per female-founded company is more than any other university system during this period, beating out Harvard, Northwestern, Yale, MIT, and UCLA by almost double their respective totals
.Okay, okay, okay…..but Claremont is way smaller and has far fewer female-founded companies than these other top universities, so that’s why it looks so impressive on a per-company basis, right? Sure, but Claremont College female entrepreneurs still rank 8th on a total capital basis during this period as well! 🤯 Moreover, the seven universities ahead of Claremont achieved their total capital number with an average of 98 companies. Claremont female alums did it with just 26! Twenty-six companies managed to raise over $1B. Whatever way you want to look at it, XX marks the spot for Claremont.
In case the benchmarking stats don’t quite do it for you, check this out:
Over 120 startup companies have been founded by Claremont female alums dating back to 1996
Combined, these companies have historically raised over $2.5B in private capital
These companies employ over 94,000 people, including many other Claremont alums
Of these companies, seven have been acquired for a combined total of $380M+, four have gone onto IPO and currently have a total market capitalization over $213B, and six currently private companies have already raised over $65M
Some of the impressive companies founded by Claremont females over the years that we’ll shout out include:
Cisco, founded by CGU alum Sandy Lerner, is a public networking technology company with a market cap of $206B
Intellia Therapeutics, founded by Pomona alum and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, is a public biotech company with a market cap of $4.5B
Honeybook, founded by Pomona alum Shadiah Sigala, is a private collaboration tool and client management company with over $240M in venture dollars raised
Urban Decay, also founded by Sandy Lerner, is a makeup and consumer goods company that was acquired for $350M
LaunchDarkly, founded by HMC alum Edith Harbaugh, is a security infrastructure company with a current private valuation of nearly $1B
Mammoth Biosciences, also founded by Jennifer Doudna, is a private biotech company that may have recently reached unicorn status
Other founders like Heather Potters, founder of needle-free injection technology Pharmajet; Maddie Hall, founder of bioengineered supertrees company Living Carbon; Laura Smith, founder of public biotech company Homology Medicines; Xiaoyin Qu, founder of digital events platform Run the World; and Miriam Cruz, founder of female wellness brand Agni; and many others are among the greater community of amazing talent that is pushing forward technology innovation. Continue to expect more from our female alums in the years to come...these are some big shoes to fill for the next generation!
🤔 Follow-up Questions
Why is it that Claremont female founders so drastically outperform other universities? Why is Biotech such a powerhouse for these female founders? Who are the next rising female stars in the ecosystem?
These questions all feel relevant for anyone in our community who’s looking to make an impact in the world of technology and entrepreneurship. We certainly don’t have all the answers, but we’ll keep digging in Between the Lines.
💼 Who’s Hiring?:
Erin Bream, CMC grad and Head of U.S. Partner Management at Uber, is hiring for a business development role on her team. 🚗 Check out the job description below and the LinkedIn post here:
💬 Talk Social was founded by CMC grad Solon Teal and Zvi Band, the former CEO and co-founder of CRM leader Contactually. They are on a mission to create an online space for richer conversations, and they are hiring for the following positions (all fully remote):
Living Carbon, founded by CMC grad Maddie Hall, is a startup company on a mission to fight climate change by genetically enhancing CO2 capture and storage in trees! 🌳 They are hiring for the following positions:
Chief of Staff
Looking for someone with baseline knowledge of climate change, startup experience, and politics/consulting experience
Go ahead and apply and mention Between the Lines, or reach out to us if any of these positions catches your 👀 !
🗣️ Conversations on the interwebz:
by Josh Tatum
This week’s top read 🔥
A fascinating thread by PO grad Laszlo Bock, founder of Humu and Gretel.ai, on team and workplace dynamics! Laszlo has all kinds of great thoughts on the workplace environment and even wrote a book about it -Work Rules. He also has an incredibly inspiring background. Read about his journey from fleeing Romania to being an exec at Google here!
Some congrats are definitely necessary….🎉
Congrats to PO grad and Buck’s Coach, Mike Budenholzer, on the NBA Championship 🥂
As the world gears up for the Olympics starting this week, check out two impressive PO Sagehens who will be representing the Claremont Colleges in Tokoyo this summer. Congrats to water polo coach, Alex Rodriguez, and OG basketball coach Gregg Pop 🤽 🏀
Join the dark side…part-time? 😈 💰
If you’re interested in learning the venture capital ropes from the best, CMC grad Mark Munro from First Round Capital has something for you 😮
Some thoughts on the VC trends moving forward by PO grad and founder of Ingressive Capital, Maya Horgan Famodu 🤔
Everything else you need to know….📖
Ho Nam, HMC grad and managing director at Altos Ventures, re-shares some great advice from Giannis’s spectacular interview before Game 5 of the NBA finals. Whether you’re an athlete or not, the wisdom still applies….it helped Giannis win the NBA Finals MVP 🦉 ☕
Marcus Baram, PO grad and editor for Fast Company, might just have your next company idea…💡
Check out this podcast interview with CMC grad and serial founder and entrepreneur, Ben Casnocha at Village Global 💼
Rebecca Offensend, CMC grad, and investor on the Working Capital Fund team gave us a little laugh earlier this week 😂
✅ Takeaways:
🎨 Keep creating & founding great ideas…Claremont founders have such an amazing network to tap into, and it is only getting better. If just a handful of grads joined the startup ranks and had a modicum of the success that our current female-entrepreneurs have had, Claremont female alums would easily break out and take the #1 spot for raw venture capital dollars raised, all while saving the world!
👥 Tap into the community…Navigating a tricky career change or question? There are so many experienced founders, investors, creators, and operators in this community that we all can learn from, create with, and collaborate alongside. In a quote attributed to Pablo Picasso, “The meaning of a Claremonster’s life is to find their gift. Their purpose in life is to give it away.” 🤝
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/why-women-owned-startups-are-better-bet
http://10years.firstround.com/
Benchmarking data for other universities sourced from Pitchbook Universities: 2019, and Claremont-related data gathered from Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn by Miles Bird, Josh Tatum, and Adhi Venkantraman. Data analysis is only as good as the source data and the people behind the analysis, so on the source data front, we acknowledge that we are working with imperfect data sources in Pitchbook and Crunchbase. On the people front, please as always write in if you believe we have made a mistake and help us improve our data set! All data has been aggregated and analyzed to the best of our abilities.