The all-female founded team at Verve announced a massive pre-Series A $3 million raise this week, in a win about more than helping to close the giant VC investment gap between male and female founders.
Verve’s latest raise, which will see them expand their women+ focused financial service offering, builds off their already successful Verve Super and leverages the engaged community they have already established. Just like Verve Super aims to close the gender gap in superannuation and has significantly helped raise awareness of the issue, Verve Money aims to close the gender gaps in other forms of investing.
This latest raise announcement comes during a tough time for capital raising generally, but especially for women. Just 3 per cent of investments went to all women-founded teams in 2022 – a trend that appears to be continuing in 2023.
Also notable on this raise is the fact the round closed early, and was oversubscribed. Verve puts this down to the impact focus of the business, the business model, and that existing membership base.
Meanwhile, the experience of the co-founders is also notable, with Alex Andrews, Christina Hobbs and Zoe Lamont, addressing a market in financial services that has typically gone overlooked: women. Hobbs, CEO, brings a wide-ranging background and unique experience to the role, including previously working with the United Nations World Food Programme, supporting people across some of the most complex and dangerous conflict hotspots in the world: Northern Syria, Somalia, Gaza and Jordan among them.
Hobbs launched Verve Super in 2018, and was later named the Women’s Agenda Emerging Entrepreneur of The Year in 2019. The idea for the business came to her while sitting in a shipping container in Baghdad. She has long seen the opportunity, and desire, from women to make considered and sustainable investments to make their money matter and align with causes they support. Hobbs has also long been particularly concerned with addressing climate change.
“This capital raise, we were simply able to demonstrate that we have thousands of Verve members who love us. We have an outstanding NPS, and we could show that most of our new super members come through word-of-mouth positive reviews – something that’s virtually unheard of in financial services,” Hobbs said.
The funding will support Verve in expanding its Verve Money product to offer a goals-focused, ethical investment app, tailored and designed around the needs and desires of women investors, and aims to narrow the gender gap in those investing outside of superannuation and a primary place of residence – a space that is still dominated (58 per cent) by men. Verve quotes research finding that male investors continue to have larger portfolios on average – at $667,000 compared to $413,000.
At Verve Money, the team is ensuring that every portfolio is not only ethically screened but that it also supports impact-focused alternative investments – which includes a minimum 20 per cent investment of each portfolio on climate solutions.
In 2021, Verve Super raised $2.6 million – and, at the time, highlighted the desire to stay majority female-owned. During that round, they attracted first time investors, prominent businesswomen, human rights lawyers and activists.
Verve was able to again attract impact-focused investors in this raise, including from Alberts, which led the round. Alberts’ Managing Director Kirsty Alberts said the impact-focused family office are longstanding supporters of female founder-led businesses and were impressed, “by Verve’s ethos of being founded by women, led by women, and tailored for women, and most importantly by how much existing Verve members love Verve.”