Women founders in Canada are vastly underestimated and underfunded, receiving only 2.3% of venture capital funding. To actively address this challenge, the TELUS Pollinator Fund and Spring Activator are launching their second Women Led Impact Investor Challenge. This program focuses on promoting gender diversity within the impact investor and startup ecosystem by nurturing connections between impact investors and women founders. Startups in the challenge will be impact-driven, creating solutions that prioritize climate, sustainable agriculture, inclusive communities and other critical needs. This year’s challenge runs from September to November culminating in a finale where one woman founder will be selected to receive a minimum $200K investment in their impact startup.

Spring Activator recognizes the impact of start-ups founded and led by women. These startups have been shown to provide innovative solutions for underserved markets, generate stronger returns and practice better risk management. At the pitch finale for the first Women Led Impact Investor Challenge in 2022, Voxcell BioInnovation Inc. walked away with a $293,000 investment from the cohort of impact investors. Led by Dr. Karolina Valente, Voxcell opened a $1M round in April 2023, and was one of only four Canadian companies to be named one of the TiE Silicon VAlley’s prestigious Startups of the Year. To build momentum for women founders seeking investment capital, this fall Spring Activator will facilitate the second Women Led Impact Investor Challenge (IIC)  presented by the TELUS Pollinator Fund, to empower impact investors to fund women founders whose startups are improving our world through purpose-driven innovation. 

Building diversity in the investment community is a priority for the Telus Pollinator Fund as it’s critical to ensuring capital flows to underserved founders. With only 19.4% of partners at Canadian venture capital firms being women, the Challenge aims to bring forward a new cohort of investors that are equipped to make impact investments that recognize the strength  diversity brings to the ecosystem.

Through its design, the Women Led Impact Investing Challenge will develop the overall impact ecosystem, increasing demand by building the capacity of women led founders while boosting supply by training investors to deploy capital into women led startups. Throughout the program, investors and founders learn hand in hand as they go through the investment process while supported by a community of like-minded peers and mentors. The program includes a custom curriculum delivered by guest speakers and subject matter experts to increase investment knowledge, trigger capital and drive purposeful innovation. New this year is an exclusive founders bootcamp to provide support, tools and resources to prepare women founders to pitch and raise early stage financing. 

“Spring is thrilled to partner with the TELUS Pollinator Fund for our second Women Led Impact Investor Challenge. Last year, I saw first hand the power this unique program has to create a diverse community of active impact investors and phenomenal women led ventures across Canada. Designed explicitly to support women and non-binary entrepreneurs to secure values-aligned capital to scale their businesses – and impact – this is a much needed catalyst to address the stark disparity in the funding of women led ventures across the country.” – Caroline von Hirschberg, Co-CEO, Spring Activator.

“As one of the world’s largest corporate social impact funds, the TELUS Pollinator Fund views diversity as a key pillar of its investment thesis, with 42 per cent of its portfolio companies led by women and 54 per cent led by Indigenous and racialized founders,” said Blair Miller, Managing Partner, TELUS Pollinator Fund. “We’re proud to once again collaborate with Spring to help generate some much needed attention for women led startups and founders, helping shape an investment ecosystem with a more inclusive and diverse mindset.