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Cake Ventures, a pre-seed and seed venture capital firm, today announced its debut fund ($17 million) backed by prominent investors including Pivotal Ventures (a Melinda French Gates company), Cendana Ventures, Screendoor, Plexo Capital, Foundry Group, and Bank of America.
In 2021, Monique Woodard founded Cake Ventures and serves as Managing Director. Cake Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm with a specific focus on investing in the future of technology being driven by major demographic changes including: aging and longevity, the increased spending power of women, and the shift to majority-minority. To date, Cake has backed companies at the seed and pre-seed stage including Guaranteed, Pamper, Bright, and Rares.
Cake Ventures is one of the few venture capital firms with an investment thesis focused on demographic change for consumers, including published research that surfaces a new way of thinking about what comes next in technology.
With a BA in Political Science from the University of Miami, Woodard began her venture investing career as a Venture Partner at 500 Global, and invested in early-stage companies like Silvernest and Blavity. Following her time at 500 Global, she has worked since as a Venture Scout for the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners and acted as an Advisor to firms like SoftBank.
“All the work in my career has led me to this point,” said Monique Woodard, Founder and Managing Director of Cake Ventures, “I see a massive opportunity to invest in venture-scale technology companies that impact the lives of the millions of people who make up tomorrow’s internet users.”
With a career that encompasses everything from Kauffman Fellow, Co-founder of Black Founders, and Innovation Fellow for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, Woodard is using her 15+ years in the tech industry, to get capital into the hands of a more diverse set of entrepreneurs.
Women have been underrepresented in the financial opportunity created by venture capital – both as equity holders on cap tables and as limited partners at venture funds.
Dedicated to shifting this narrative, over 25% of Cake Venture’s LP capital was allocated to female LPs, many of whom are women of color.
The makeup of the Cake Ventures portfolio reflects its commitment to founder diversity. To date, 40% of Cake’s initial investments have a female founder/CEO and 40% of its investments have a Black founder/CEO.
“We know that having more women, especially women of color, in leadership roles in VC will unlock greater returns. With Monique’s diversity-first mindset and extensive track record as an early-stage capital partner to entrepreneurs, Cake Ventures is poised to be a leader in evolving the tech industry, and we are thrilled to be investors in the fund,” said Erin Harkless Moore, Director of Investments at Pivotal Ventures.
To learn more about Cake Ventures, visit www.cake.vc.
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