Leveraging the power of women—and the millennial VC who is investing in them

Co-founder and managing partner of the first female-led millennial venture capital firm, SoGal Ventures, Elizabeth Galbut sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss how she's going beyond investing in women to creating a global ecosystem of both women and men who are investing in women.

The Accidental Venture Capitalist

As the only child of two doctors, Elizabeth “grew up in the healthcare system.” “And very early on, I was seeing that there were a lot of problems in healthcare from a business perspective, as well as, how do you improve patient care for all of us in the U.S.?”

Initially, Elizabeth’s goal was to enter the healthcare industry to solve some of these broad issues. In the end, she says, she’s doing something very similar as a venture capitalist, by investing directly into innovative companies that are currently changing the landscape of healthcare. “So I call myself a bit of an accidental venture capitalist,” she tells Sam. “It definitely wasn't what I went into graduate school thinking I was going to do, but looking back, it really makes sense.”

During graduate school at Johns Hopkins she recognized the need for venture capitalists to invest in healthcare ideas. At Hopkins, she saw so many entrepreneurs with amazing backgrounds who weren't able to find capital to finance their businesses. “I thought,there's really this arbitrage investment opportunity of backing these founders.”

Through early, small investments she learned the value of even very small investments in talented people with great ideas. “It's not always about the dollar amount, but it's really about being that supporter and,helping somebody understand that what you're doing is actually valuable and you should keep going.”

Building an ecosystem

Elizabeth was just 23 when she and her 25-year-old partner decided to launch a venture capital firm. Going to career fairs and conferences as an MBA student had opened her eyes to the gender issues in the VC field. “Sometimes the men venture capitalists would say we don't hire women,” she recalls. Rather than join a male-dominated firm she and her partner founded SoGal, with an investment focus on exceptional, diverse founding teams that have plans for global expansion focused on tackling major consumer or healthcare problems in the U.S. and Asia.

Elizabeth and her partner identified early on that they were interested in supporting not just women entrepreneurs, but also other women investors. She describes those efforts as creating an ecosystem for investors, empowering founders and investors, and creating a support system and community. “There are trillions of dollars to be unlocked by empowering women. So of course I want to empower women from a social perspective, but it's also a deep business opportunity that we should all be paying attention to.”