Good morning! Subscription site Passes is sued for child pornography, Serena Williams joins Toronto Tempo's ownership team, and Anu Duggal is behind some of your favorite female-founded startups.
- Investing with impact. Even if you don't know Anu Duggal's name, if you read this newsletter, you're definitely familiar with her impact. Duggal's firm Female Founders Fund has over the past decade backed some of the most influential female-founded startups: Rent the Runway, wedding platform Zola, razor and personal care brand Billie, and the women's health unicorn Maven.
I wrote about Duggal, the founding partner of Female Founders Fund, for the first in a new series of profiles of women in tech rolling out in Fortune over the next few weeks. We chatted about her circuitous route to venture capital—she grew up between Hong Kong, New York, Manila, and Tokyo and quit her early consulting job to travel and go to cooking school. Later, she opened India's first wine bar and worked on a Bollywood dance tech platform.
Duggal is also familiar with challenges: She entered the workforce the week of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and graduated business school into the Great Recession. To launch Female Founders Fund, she persevered through 700 meetings to raise $5.85 million—and quickly set about distinguishing her firm through brand and community, understanding its small AUM was unlikely to make waves on its own. Those experiences have helped her navigate tech and venture capital's extended downturn over the past couple years. They've also influenced what she looks for in founders: "a chip on their shoulder" to prove themselves.
Female Founders Fund returned its first fund last year—thanks to its investment in Maven (which completed a secondary sale on its road to going public), but also thanks to some other exits like the sales of Billie to Edgewell and Eloquii to Walmart. Duggal is proud that it's not just one investment determining her firm's future.
Read the full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Joey Abrams. Subscribe here.
