Most powerful women in the world, the state of diversity in tech, and the complete Female Founded Holiday gift guide
The past year has been, in many ways something out of the ordinary. As we are wrapping it up, we are taking a look at the most powerful women, the state of diversity in tech, and $ funding to female founders during 2020. We also take a look at the record-breaking IPOs from this week and as usual, you’ll learn about the Woman of the Week. Finally, I’ve included a complete Female Founded Holiday Gift Guide. I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Women who run the 🌎
From fighting the pandemic to breaking glass ceilings in politics and finance – women everywhere are making history. Forbes annual list of the World’s Most Powerful women includes 10 heads of state (as a Finn, I’m especially proud of the Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin on the list), 38 CEOs, and five entertainers. Also, the 17 newcomers on the list illustrate how women are leading all aspects of society.
And the women to watch in 2021 include for example former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen. Yellen has been nominated as Treasury Secretary by US president-elect Joe Biden. This would make her the first woman to hold the position.
The State of Diversity in European Tech 👩💻👨💻
It has been a record year of VC funding for European Tech. However, Atomico’s annual The State of European Tech 2020 showed that progress on gender diversity stagnated this year with all men teams capturing 90.8% of all capital raised (90.3% in 2019).
The Atomico report is a lot to go through, but not to worry - Sifted composed an excellent piece of the 20 things to know from the report. Read it here.
VC 💵 to Female Founders Hit a Snag in 2020 📉
Funding to female founders based in the US has been breaking records for over a decade. And as encouraging as these trends have been, they hit a snag in 2020. Covid-19 had a disproportionate impact on female founders. The impact was especially visible in deal activity and valuations. The report by Pitchbook showed that year to date female-founded companies based in the US represents 23.3% of all VC rounds close, down from 23.8% in full-year 2019.
CEOs named Michael or James more common than women CEOs 🤦🏻♀️
S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of the 500 largest listed companies in the United States. Of these 500 companies, just 6% or 31 have a woman CEO. This makes CEOs named Michael or James, which in total are 40, more common than women CEOs. Furthermore, Chairs of the board named John, outnumber women on chairs, 23%, and 21% respectively. Perhaps most depressingly nearly eight in 10 companies have no women at the board chair, CEO, or CFO level.
Tesla’s first-ever Diversity Report 📝
Elon Musk’s Tesla published its first-ever diversity report late last Friday. It said that the company has a “majority-minority” U.S. workforce overall, but 83% of employees in leadership roles are men and 59% are White.
Last week Nasdaq announced intentions to require publicly listed company boards to have at least one woman and one underrepresented group or LGBTQ director.
You get a high valuation, and you get a high valuation…
Calm Valuation 💭
Meditation app Calm hits a $2 billion valuation with the most recent financing round led by prior investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors included Salesforce CEO and new owner of Slack, Marc Benioff.
Robinhood gets IPO ready 💹
Trading app Robinhood hires Goldman Sachs to lead its 2021 IPO. In its last funding round in September, Robinhood was valued at $11.7 billion.
IPO pops 🍾
As TechCrunch journalist Alex Wilhelm puts it “Haters gonna hate, IPOs gonna pop”. On Wednesday DoorDash and C3 Ai surged in their first days of trading, 83%, and 151% respectively.
And the next day Airbnb opened at $146 per share, which was 115% above the IPO price at $68 per share. The opening price valued Airbnb at $101.6 billion. The value, or more specifically the equity value, is the value of a company available to its owners or shareholders. The equity value is calculated simply by taking the current share price and multiplying it with the fully diluted shares outstanding, which for Airbnb are close to 700 million.
And some break-up drama 💔
In 2012 The Federal Trade Commission or short the FTC approved Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion and similarly the acquisition of Whatsapp for $19 billion in 2012. Now the FTC accuses Facebook of illegally crushing competition and could require Facebook to divest Instagram and Whatsapp.
The devil wears Stitch Fix 👠
On Monday, Stitch Fix reported a surprise profit and revenue growth of 10%. Shares soared as a result. The online personal shopping service expects revenue to grow between 20% and 25% in fiscal 2021 given its recent momentum. Stitch Fix stock was up more than 33% in after-hours trading. And up almost 50% in next days early trading
Woman of The Week
The founder and CEO Katrina Lake was the youngest woman in tech to take a company public when Stitch Fix was listed on Nasdaq in 2017. After working at Polyvore and in management consulting, Lake pursued her MBA at Harvard, at which time she founded Stitch Fix. Lake has been listed as one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business. Furthermore, Lake is a board member at Grubhub and Glossier. For further inspiration, listen to Katrina Lake on the Invest Like The Best podcast.
The Complete Female Founded Holiday Gift Guide 💝
This Holiday season give joy to your loved ones and support some female-founded brands. I’ve piled together a complete Female Founded Holiday Gift Guide for you. Please share this guide and your personal favorite female-founded Holiday gift ideas on Twitter.
For the Fashionista
For the Beauty Lover
For the Cozy
For the Fitness Gal
For the Book Worm
For Girls
For Him
Thank you so much for reading this week’s newsletter. I would love to hear your feedback and please share this with a few friends you think would find this interesting. Have a lovely weekend 💜