Aliavia closes $13.5 million fund for women-led startups in Australia and US

ALIAVIA Ventures has just announced the close of its first fund. Sitting at $13.5 million, it supports ALIAVIA’s mission to invest exclusively in women-founded startups in Australia and the US.

Launched in 2021, ALIAVIA invests in pre-seed and seed stage B2B and B2C companies with at least one woman founder. To date, ALIAVIA has already invested $8.4 million across nine startups, which equates to 70% deployment of the fund thus far.

These include the Australian-based HowToo, Othelia and Eugene. The firm confirmed with SmartCompany that 55% of the startups invested in so far have been Australian.

According to ALIAVIA, out of the $238 billion invested globally in 2022, only 17% went to mixed-gender founding teams, and only 2% went to all-women teams.

Zooming into Australia specifically, we’ve seen a similar trend, the latest Cut Through Quarterly report told an increasingly familiar story — a few big raises for women-led startups skewing the numbers.

In this case, Q3 of 2023 saw 80% of the $182 million raised by startups with at least one female founder go to just two companies.

It was a similar story in Q1, with deal participation for women founders hitting record levels. However, this was again driven mostly by a few large deals, including a $105 million Series B for Loam Bio.

And as we’ve heard from female founders within the local ecosystem, things become even more difficult once you get outside of the early-stage funding rounds — with dollars becoming harder to come by further down the track, with a few unicorn-shaped exceptions such as Canva and Airwallex.

“The gender imbalance is appalling, and while there is a lot of talk that the inequality is shifting, we’re still a long way from parity,” Marisa Warren, co-founder and managing partner of ALIAVIA, said to SmartCompany.

“We want to see more billion-dollar startups funded and led by women, not million-dollar startups. As investors we have the power to change the world through what we invest in. This starts with making our dollars count by investing in gender diverse teams that are having a real positive impact on the world, whilst also delivering superior returns.”

Warren is also the founder of ELEVACAO, a pre-accelerator aimed at women tech founders. In the eight years it has been running it has supported 175 founders.

With a dual continent focus, ALIAVIA says that it is filling a gap for Australian startups that want to expand into the US.

“We act as a bridge by investing in an Australian company, where most US-based investors won’t, and help them successfully launch and accelerate growth in the US,” Warren said.

“The US market is significantly different to Australia and we help our founders navigate the nuances, connect to our network of co-investors, corporates and individuals to get the US traction required.”

According to ALIAVIA, the closing of its $13.5 million fund is just the beginning of its plans for a “multi-fund, multi-generational firm to drive gender diversity and equity in venture capital”.

ALIAVIA is staying tight-lipped about future investments, but it did tell SmartCompany that it is supporting founders across healthtech, fintech, edtech, HR tech, and media and entertainment. It also confirmed that it invests in follow-on rounds for companies in its existing portfolio.

According to anchor investor, Carol Schwartz, this fund is essential for helping more women grow successful startups.

“They’re the first and only pre-series A VC in Australia to be established by and invest exclusively in women, and they continue to lead the charge to see greater equality in VC funding,” Schwartz said in a statement.

“ALIAVIA is well on the way to proving up the thesis that investing in female founders results not only in the creation of companies that solve real problems but are also profitable, producing strong returns for their investors.”