“Changing the face of angel investing.” It’s a phrase I’ve heard several times now after spending time with Natalia Oberti Noguera, founder and CEO of an amazing resource for women — Pipeline Fellowship. Most recently I saw evidence of Natalia’s mission in action, at the graduation of Bay Area fellows held at Google’s offices in San Francisco.
Pipeline is a bootcamp that teaches women how to be angel investors. Women who are accepted to the program have to commit to investing in “a woman-led for-profit social venture in exchange for equity and a board seat.” Fifty women have graduated from her program, and she’s on target to double that number this year. How awesome is that?
What Natalia is doing is so powerful. By educating women on how to become angel investors, she gives them the opportunity to take their skills to crowd-funding companies like CircleUp, which only allows accredited investors to invest in the consumer packaged goods companies they help to raise money (many of which are started and owned by women). And while investing in anything can be risky, the idea that women can learn to make smart investment decisions with the potential for a financial return that in turn can be put to work in another company and so on and so on is tremendously powerful on so many levels.
But what resonates most for me about her mission to change the face of angel investing is the idea of women helping women, which is what we are all about at maybrooks.com. The premise of our site is predicated on the idea that women can help each other find flexible job opportunities, by sharing links to jobs they that see come across their networks, and by women-owned companies and women hiring managers posting job opportunities with us.
In Natalia’s case, she’s helping educate women to invest in other women and their businesses, and the cycle continues from there. Today, 22% of angel investors are women. What would the world look like if that number were 50% or better?
Read more about the Pipeline bootcamp, who qualifies, and how to apply.
