Victress Capital, a fund founded by women to back women founders, just closed its second fund

The two friendly acquaintances originally joined forces to enhance their “cognitive diversity,” says Cashman, scraping together a total of $2 million from friends and family so they could establish a track record.

Ultimately, they used that money to fund 14 startups by writing checks ranging from $100,000 to $150,000. A couple of them have already been acquired. Moxxly, which sold silent, wearable breast pumps, was acquired by Medela, a leading breast pump maker, in 2017. Last summer, it was shut down, but Cashman and Norris suggest that investors (another of whom was Randi Zuckerberg) got their money back and that they were happy to see it acquired by what seemed at the time like a strong strategic partner. A second portfolio company, Werk, more recently sold to a Chicago-based startup called The Mom Project for undisclosed terms.

Others of their bets include Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumer organic food delivery business that has so far raised $43 million from investors, according to Crunchbase; Mented Cosmetics, a cosmetics company catering to women with darker skin tones that has raised $4 million to date; and Copper Cow Coffee, a young L.A.-based startup that makes organic Vietnamese coffee and has raised $3 million, per Crunchbase.

The idea all along was to raise a larger fund so that as Victress’s young portfolio matures, it can invest more into its breakout winners, as well as to fund other innovative young startups.

In fact, toward that end, Victress — whose newest fund came largely came from family offices — has added to its team in recent years. In February, it brought in Kate Castle, a longtime marketing partner at Flybridge Capital Partners who later cofounded XFactor Ventures as a partner. In 2018, it also hired HBS alum Madeline Keulen, who previously interned with Victress and is now a vice president. (Because of Norris’s background and network, Victress receives some of its deal flow from Harvard and HBS and typically brings in HBS students as interns.)

It wasn’t easy assembling its team — or its new fund. Norris half-kiddingly calls $20 million “no man’s land” in the eyes of institutional investors. Though they are just now closing the vehicle, they began assembling checks for it in late 2018 and have already funded seven startups that represent 25% of their new investing capital.

Still, they’re playing the long game and think the relationship-building they’ve done will pay off — both with institutional investors that will be tracking this second fund with an eye toward its third, and with venture firms around the country with whom they’ve syndicated deals and that now keep Victress in mind when meeting nascent startups with diverse founding teams.

A big win would help grow the outfit from here, too, of course. Only time will tell if they’ll have one, but Norris and Cashman talks enthusiastically about numerous portfolio companies, including Minneapolis-based Rae, which makes what it markets as libido-enhancing vegan vitamins. Rae sells its products directly to consumers but they’re also available at Target, a retail giant that, notably, has remained open throughout the pandemic.

Rae was able to secure such valuable real estate partly because its cofounder and CEO, Angie Tebbe, spent the previous 12 years as a senior director in merchandising at Target, where she oversaw the private label products in the chain’s beauty and wellness aisles. But Rae’s products are also priced affordably, with a 30-day supply of vitamins costing $14, compared with many alternatives that cost twice as much and more.

That’s partly what drew Victress to the company. Victress is focused on tech-enabled consumer services, marketplaces and digitally native brands. But if a startup in the last camp wants its attention, its products can’t be priced for the most affluent consumers with money to burn. Victress is far more interested in startups that aim to sell at an “authentic, accessible price point for the majority of America,” says Cashman.