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Tech Topics In This Article: Women in tech
What Sheryl Sandberg did for women with Lean In is comparable to Kristina Montague’s debut book Jump In: Women Investing in Women, Growing Our Capital and Impact. Kristina’s mantra is: “Invest in the change you want to see in the world.” Her words take on a new meaning as she tells her stories from the world of angel investing.
As a co-founder of The JumpFund, one of the only funds in the Southeast dedicated to investing in female founders, Kristina has packaged up her experience and lessons learned into a guidebook for anyone working in the ecosystem.
Full disclosure: not only am I a woman in tech who was already geeking out about this book, but I’ve also benefited from The JumpFund as I worked with two of their female founders – Titania Jordan at Bark, and Rachel McCrickard at Motivo – in their startups’ early days. The JumpFund was instrumental at the inflection points and growth stages of those companies, along with the 30 other female-led startups from their fund of nearly $8 million.
Kristina graciously agreed to sit down for Q&A to share more about her experience and our shared vision to get more capital to historically underrepresented founders.
“When JumpFund first started a decade ago, Kristina and her cohort faced pushback and the questions: “Why women? Why now?” As you’ll read in the chapters ahead, the sisterhood shaking up tech in Chattanooga ultimately answered these queries with results. Their resounding success demonstrates how investing in women drives both innovation and the bottom line. And perhaps it will inspire you, dear reader, to jump in, too!” – Heather Cabot, author of Geek Girl Rising, The New Chardonnay, and Level Up with Stacy Abrams and Laura Hodgson
Q&A with Montague here:
Q: Tell us a bit about your origin story. How’d you get your start in the startup world?
I’m originally from Seattle. My husband and I met doing Teach for America, and he was from Chattanooga. After grad school, I decided to try Chattanooga out, and it has been my home since 1995. Getting into the tech world happened organically. I spent about 25 years in education working in the school systems and public policy, then as Assistant Dean at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga’s Rollins College of Business. That was when the light turned on for helping female entrepreneurs and I started exploring the world of venture capital.
Q: What made you decide to jump in and start The JumpFund?
By 2013, Chattanooga quickly became a mecca for young creatives and entrepreneurs. We were the first city in the U.S. to build a high-speed, gigabit fiber optic network hosted by our Electric Power Board (EPB) and thus rebranded as Gig City, well before Google Fiber. Our local economic development think tank, the Enterprise Center, along with foundations and the city government, began to focus efforts on how our city attracts and retains talent as well as new business. The siren song of the startup community powered by high-speed internet was beginning to make Chattanooga a hotspot.
Yet, in the first few years of its development, our startup economy was predominantly white and very much all-male. To discuss the clear diversity deficit in our entrepreneurial ecosystem, a group of us gathered at the LampPost, a new venture incubator, with the LampPost’s only female partner, Shelley Prevost, and serial entrepreneur, Tiffanie Robinson. We discovered the lack of women in our entrepreneurial ecosystem was more widespread. Even today, women receive less than 3% of venture capital.
We knew that if we wanted to change the game, we had to get in it ourselves. Our small but mighty band of women became determined to start an angel investment fund of our own.
Q: Raising a fund is no easy task. Can you share a bit about how you all raised your initial rounds of venture capital?
Shelley, Tiffanie, and I knew we wanted to expand our initial General Partner group that would manage the fund, so we invited Betsy Brown, manager of a local trust company, and Cory Allison, a serial entrepreneur and eager investor wanting to pay it forward to other women entrepreneurs. And as we launched Fund II, Kim Seals, who had been a LP in Fund I, joined our team and became our anchor to the hot Atlanta market. Leonora Williamson, a Harvard Business School educated consultant, also joined our journey early.
In 2014, we raised our first fund of $2.5 million, and from all from women. When you’re starting a fund, it’s difficult to find accredited investors, especially high net-worth women, and most of them have not been exposed to this asset class. We led with our pitch that this was a unique opportunity to invest in women and find overlooked investments in the process. The majority of our investors were women in business or business adjacent who understood the importance of investing in women.
We went on to raise close to $8 million in total with our second fund, having countless conversations about why more women weren’t being invested in and rode that wave of movement across the country. At the time, there were no other women-led, female founder-focused, early-stage investment groups in our region. We were forging a path all on our own. Our investors knew this and were excited to join our effort to change the landscape and start something that could have a real impact for women both economically and socially.
Q: As someone who has personally worked for two of the female-led startups you invested in with Bark and Motivo, I’ve seen the impact your work has had firsthand. Do you have an idea of the total economic impact of your investments?
With our investments, we got in very early, which resulted in more than $150 million in additional investments in these companies. The early-stage investors are the ones who give you the first wins and allow you to grow to the next level. We also continue to see the secondary impact with startups like Emrgy in hydropower, Funding U with no co-sign loans, Bark, Motivo… we’re very proud that they’re making a social or environmental impact, and continuing to do well. We’re seeing them do good on multiple levels.
Q: What inspired you to write “Jump In”? Was there an “aha” moment after your time in the VC world?
We were hitting the 10-year mark on our first fund, and I was always being asked about our story. It’s a unique, coming-of-age story about the rising tide of women coming into this investment space. I wanted to capture this movement, our funds in the Southeast, our impact, and a call to arms. There are tons of profiles and quotes in the book about badassery and women doing it for themselves, whether they are investors or entrepreneurs.
“If there was a group of women in Chattanooga who figured out how to do this, you can, too!”
click here to learn more about Jump In and purchase the book
Photos provided by Kristina Montague
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