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 Jennifer Fonstad, a former partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and
Theresia Gouw, a former partner at Accel Ventures, announced
Thursday they had raised the cash for their nascent venture firm,
San Francisco-based Aspect Ventures.
The duo raised the funds just weeks after the close of a
high-profile gender-discrimination trial pitting Ellen Pao, a
onetime venture capitalist, against her former firm, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, which won.
The case helped focus attention on gender disparities in venture
capital, where women make up only around 4 percent of senior
investing partners, according to Pitchbook, a consulting firm, and
some leading firms have no women partners.
While recognizing that gender sets them apart as founding venture
partners in Silicon Valley, Fonstad said in an interview that she
and Gouw wanted to be recognized for their work first.
“We are gender neutral as a firm,” she said.
Aspect, which specializes in backing start-ups at the early stages,
is making seed, or the very earliest, investments in start-ups in
the $100,000-$500,000 range. It is also investing at the next stage,
known as Series A, in the $2 million-$5 million range, and will make
some follow-on, or Series B investments, up to $10 million.
Founded last year, it has already invested in companies such as
digital-health marketplace Vida and child-care startup UrbanSitter.
It specializes in companies that customers can access easily using
smartphones.
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Fonstad and Gouw moved up by about a year their plans to seek
outside institutional funds rather than use their own funds, Fonstad
said, to send a message they were building a lasting firm.
“It’s certainly intended to be something beyond the founders over
time,” Fonstad said. “It’s important from a discipline perspective,
as well as enabling others as you bring them up through the firm, to
have third-party funding.”
The pair came up with the name Aspect Ventures after a brainstorming
session with Caryn Marooney, a longtime communications executive,
and deciding they wanted to draw on various aspects of their
experience while building their venture firm.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Ken Wills)
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