WEL Manitoba builds community encouraging early-stage investors

When Katie Hall Hursh made her first angel investment, she was happy to support her friend’s fledgling business. She also realized how little she knew about early-stage investing.

The Winnipeg executive took an online course to learn more. Afterward, the instructor told Hall Hursh about Women’s Equity Lab Manitoba, an all-women angel investment fund that was starting up. She applied and became a limited partner, joining about 25 women for the initial fund, with each investor contributing $5,500.

The fund invested in three companies: Ginger Desk, which offers virtual assistants for solo medical practitioners; SalonMonster, a digital toolkit for salon professionals; and VoxCell BioInnovation, a biotech company.

“I had just a phenomenal experience going through that first fund,” Hall Hursh said. “There’s just no limits on where some of these companies can go, and to be a part of that story, albeit a very, very small part … is a really, really neat part of the experience.”

Encouraging more women to become early-stage investors has been one of WEL Manitoba’s goals since it launched in 2023, said Joelle Foster, who co-founded the provincial chapter. (It’s affiliated with a national organization that has chapters in Atlantic Canada, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Silicon Valley.)

Data from the federal government shows despite owning 21 per cent of businesses in Canada, women founders receive less than four per cent of venture capital.

“We need more women investing in startups because women bring a different perspective, and women will invest in women’s startups,” Foster said.

All the investors in WEL are women, but they do not exclusively invest in companies with women founders. The fund is sector agnostic. The one consistent requirement is that the solution be technology-enabled.

Thirty-seven women joined WEL Manitoba Fund 2. That fund invested in Bird&Be, which offers fertility supplements and reproductive health; Sonaro, which created 3D diagnostic ultrasound for vascular disease; and Taiv, a Winnipeg advertising technology company.

WEL Manitoba Fund 3 is now open and welcoming limited partners until April 30. LPs will each invest $5,750 ($750 of which will go toward administrative expenses). The fund will invest in three to five early-stage Canadian companies, with fund cheques of $35,000 to $80,000 per company.

LPs commit to a two- to three-hour meeting every six weeks, virtually or in person, with as much or as little additional involvement as they would like to add on after due diligence has been conducted.

Investors receive complimentary access to the “Angel Investing 101” course offered by ClassRebel, a venture education company founded by former Winnipegger Brooke Harley.

Forty-five women have joined WEL Manitoba Fund 3 so far. The managing partners are Foster, Hall Hursh, Trudy Martens, Mia Balansag, Lindy Norris and Melanie McCreath.

Martens said she was inspired to get involved with WEL in part because of her work as a consultant and fractional chief financial officer.

Working with some smaller businesses has given Martens an appreciation for the challenges of raising capital and the limitations that exist when a company doesn’t have enough money.

“The more people who know about early-stage investing — about the risks involved, but also the rewards and the good things that can come out of it — the better it is for the whole ecosystem and for the small companies and the startups in our environment,” Martens said.

“It’s like a ‘it takes a community to raise a child’ kind of thing. Different people can play different parts.”

The rewards can be financial, Martens said, though she’s not expecting to become a millionaire via WEL. Learning how to be a responsible and knowledgeable investor, and getting to meet dozens of women professionals, are other rewards.

“It’s very easy to (tell the group) you don’t know something,” Martens said. “There’s no judgments. Different people know different stuff, and everyone’s trying to get everyone to a higher level.

Hall Hursh and Martens said the entrepreneurs they’ve encountered through WEL have impressed them.

“The depth of creativity and gumption that these founders have to have in order to pursue these ideas, and to have the insight to be able to spot a problem and then believe that there is a solution for it in the form of a business, (sticks out),” Hall Hursh said.

“There’s a whole world of really smart, really talented people trying to start businesses out there,” Martens added.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca