Fueling Female Success: Joanna Invests in Action, Not Hype
In my 15 years working in entrepreneurship and innovation, I’ve encountered a phenomenon I call “startup theater” — where promotion and activity are pursued for their own sake, rather than driving real progress. You see this with startup accelerators that are 90% fluff, diversity events that endlessly discuss gaps and barriers without taking action, and corporate “innovation” programs that are more about marketing than substance.
Don’t get me wrong — most of these efforts come from a place of genuine positive intent, with good people aiming to make a difference. Raising awareness is certainly the first step toward change. However, when it comes to addressing the gender earnings gap and boosting the number of successful female entrepreneurs (and the capital they need), we are well past the awareness stage. It’s time to act.
Another pitfall is the overcrowded landscape of organizations attempting to “fix” the problem. Reinventing the wheel is the worst approach if you genuinely want to help. A frequent, not entirely unfounded, criticism is that if each bright, driven woman supporting female entrepreneurs became an entrepreneur herself, we’d progress more quickly. This concept deserves its own post, but I touch on its challenges briefly below.
This backdrop is why I was inspired after meeting Claire Tange, co-founder of Joanna Invests. Claire is a TU Delft-educated Chemical Engineer-turned-CFO, who oversaw Fastned’s €40M fundraise and Dutch IPO. She founded Joanna to move beyond awareness and education about gender disparities, focusing on action.
Joanna’s other co-founder, Annemarie Kruijer, brings extensive experience from roles at Vodafone, her own mobility startup, and now as Head of Marketing at the FinTech scaleup Briqwise. Claire and Annemarie connected over a shared desire to tackle the gender earning and funding gap meaningfully. They created Joanna Invests, a community-backed angel investment fund allowing investors to join with small tickets (ranging from €2k to €10k, with larger tickets possible) to invest in seed-stage female-founded or led startups. They quickly raised €500k from over 500 community members, investing in startups like the YC-backed mental well-being startup Quan.
I’m excited to share that I’ll be using some of my career-break time to support Joanna in raising its next investment tranche and continuing to build their platform, both as an investor and as a community developer for a worthy cause.
Here’s why I believe this is a great place to focus energy:
It’s a way to address the pension gap.
Data shows that American women’s retirement income is about 30% lower than men’s. In the Netherlands, this gap is 40%, according to a 2021 report from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). This is due to several factors, including the gender pay gap and women taking more career breaks for caretaking or working part-time to support family needs.
Angel investing is risky, and it’s not a magic bullet for closing this gap. However, learning about different investment risk classes and investing in a well-chosen angel portfolio across multiple startups is a valuable way to gain experience in a controlled manner. Additionally, with lower entry tickets, angel investing becomes accessible to those interested in diversifying their investments, particularly women.
Angel investing is democratizing funding opportunities.
We’ve all heard the depressing stats about how little VC goes to female founders. But here’s the exciting news: angel investing is opening new pathways at the earliest stage. In the US, 47% of angel investors are women, a 39% increase since 2021. Simultaneously, 46% of entrepreneurs seeking angel investment are women, a 62% increase since 2021.
Initial seed funding can be a critical leg up, which is why it’s exciting to see that about 29% of female entrepreneurs who pursue angel investing are successful (compared to the market average of 25%).
What does this tell us? More women are investing, more women are raising funds, and the deals are of high quality. What a time to be alive (and able to invest!).
Source: Allison Byers, LinkedIn
We need to keep pushing to change the gender norm around brilliance and entrepreneurship.
Back to the question, “Why don’t all of you ladies stop ‘supporting’ female entrepreneurs and just become entrepreneurs?” This topic could fill, and certainly has filled, a few PhD theses.
Imagine that for thousands of years, as a gender, you’ve been conditioned to be grounded, kind, humble, and your success was predicated on putting others first. This is also how others were conditioned to interact with you and evaluate you. Add to that centuries of reinforcement that brilliance (something we’re told is needed to build a great company) is a male trait. Now, try to push both genders into a system of entrepreneurship and investment where the leading institutions celebrate a founder’s ability to be an egomaniac.
It works for some women. But for the rest of us, we’re trying not to operate within systems built by and for men but to create complementary and supportive systems where we feel at home. We need and want both genders to be successful, to be part of creating that success, and supporting unbiased access to capital can increase the number of successful female entrepreneurs. This, in turn, will convince more women, despite centuries of “programming,” to take the plunge.
It’ll take time, but we are moving in the right direction.
In the coming months, I’ll be helping Claire and Annemarie raise the next tranche for the fund and invest in the next set of female-led startups. If you are interested in getting involved, I’d love to chat with you! Please check out the Joanna Invests website for more information and feel free to contact me.
As Tina Fey aptly put it, “Whatever the problem, be part of the solution.” Cheers to taking action!
