Female Founders and Funders at Berkeley Summit

Female Founders and Funders Summit at Berkeley is a flagship event of Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley Club.

Funding is still inequitable in the VC ecosystem and only 1.8% of all VC funding went to all female-founded companies in 2023.

The persistent funding gap for female entrepreneurs drastically undermines the startup ecosystem's disruptiveness and poses a significant barrier to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals, threatening our collective future.

Despite the plethora of female-focused startup/VC events out there, we realized that at Berkeley and beyond:

(a) we hadn’t encountered any that were actively teaching female founders and funders actionable skills that they could use to overcome the biases and narrow the gender gap and

(b) there was no community that catered to both female founders and funders, even though both of these ecosystems are two sides of the same coin.

We decided to fill that gap and bring them together through the Female Founders and Funders at Berkeley Club.

The comprehensive agenda for the day at the FFFB Summit encompasses keynote speeches, panel discussions with leaders in the venture capital sector known for their support of women, presentations by female startup founders, and targeted workshops designed to explore funding avenues for companies founded by women. Additionally, the program aims to bolster the success of women as both entrepreneurs and investors. The Summit also presents unique networking opportunities, enabling participants to connect with like-minded professionals, mentors, and potential collaborators in the field.

Learn more and join the movement at the main event of women in business of Berkeley ecosystem: https://femalefoundersandfunders.org/

Morning refreshment & networking

Official opening of the Summit, Welcome Speech

• Julia Daviy Berezovska, Co-Chair Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley
• Shilpa Beesabathuni, PhD, Co-Chair Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley

Foreword:

• Rhonda Schrader, Executive Director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program and the Bay Area Node for NSF I-Corps

Keynote speech

to be announced soon

Navigating the Venture Capital Landscape for Female Founders: Strategies for overcoming barriers and securing funding in a male-dominated industry.

Speakers: Caroline Ingeborn, Co-Founder & CEO Leap, Serial Entrepreneur

Speaker: Lily Yuen Xu

Underrepresented founder startups @ AWS, Berkeley undergrad

This workshop is adapted based on the research of Dr. Laura Huang, a professor at HBS who spent five years studying gender parity in the startup world. She found that women founders were often asked preventative questions when pitching to investors, while their male counterparts were asked promotional questions. This workshop will help female founders recognize biased questions\ them with tactical ways to respond.

Speaker: Sandy Diao

Investor, IOVC

The Future of Female Leadership in VC: Trends, opportunities, and predictions for women in venture capital.

Speakers:

• Yvonne Lutsch, Investment Principal, Bosch Venture Capital
• Vivien Qu, VC SOSV, Berkeley Alumnus, Founder of funded startups
• Meera Oak, Senior Principal at Alumni Ventures
• Yulia Lalutska, VP at Adam Street Partners

• Amber Janda, PhD, Co-founder and CTO of Tau Carbon, 2019 Alum of BEV's Stanford Climate Ventures
• Yasemin Oğuz, Co-founder/CEO Kaizen lntelligence & Pusula.ai

Co-Chairs of FFFB

Venue: Spieker Forum

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Haas School of Business, 2220 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, United States