Celebrating Female Leadership: The Artemis Fund SXSW Roundup

Celebrating Female Leadership: The Artemis Fund SXSW Roundup

About

By The Artemis Fund

 

The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all, but it’s not possible without diverse perspectives. Artemis leads seed rounds for diverse tech founders with wild ambitions in fintech, commerce, and care building the economy of the future.

The Artemis Fund was everywhere at SXSW 2024! We’re excited to share a recap of our favorite events and key takeaways from the conference. From our third annual Founded in Texas event to the So Ambitious dinner hosted by Black Ambition, SXSW 2024 was one for the books.

 

 

The Artemis Fund’s Founded in Texas

For the third year in a row, The Artemis Fund collaborated with Project W, HearstLab, and Brown Advisory to host Founded in Texas. This unique investor feedback session is designed to support Texas-based women who are founders of B2B and B2B2C technology companies. Founders presented to select investors and industry experts, who provided feedback on presentations, business models, and overall strategy.

Why Texas?

Artemis invests in wildly ambitious founders building the economy of the future. We look where others might miss, so building awareness, resources, and networks in “secondary” markets is critical to our success. When others go left, we go right.

Female founders in Texas are disrupting a wide range of industries. Companies in this particular cohort of Founded in Texas ranged from fintech for lenders, to AI for cow embryos, to video ad creation.

The Full List of Participating Founders:

Plus, the Texas venture market remains steady. In Q4 of 2023, $3.8B was invested in Austin alone. Since the founding of Dell in the 1980s, many tech companies have laid down their roots in Austin. The tech scene has become known as the Silicon Hills, where 5,500 startups and tech companies call home. You can check out our piece here to learn more about the thriving ecosystem in Austin.

The Full List of Participating Investors:

The Impact

We believe technology has the opportunity to sustain prosperity for all, but it’s not possible without diverse perspectives. At Artemis, we pride ourselves on providing founders with the skills and networks they need to accelerate the growth of their companies. Founded in Texas provided founders with opportunities to get feedback and learn from each other’s pitches, helped to expose them to a much broader investor network, and helped them grow their founder networks. In a spread-out venture market like Texas, these types of opportunities are invaluable.

We plan to continue this event in Texas, and beyond, for years to come. Is there a secondary market you’d like to see us in? You can send your suggestions to community@theartemisfund.com.

Female Founder Breakfast

Thank you to Davis Wright Tremaine for being an undying supporter of female founders and investors. In addition to co-sponsoring our Founded in Texas event, Diana also attended the Project W x True Wealth Dinner. Hosted by Project W and True Wealth, and sponsored by JPMorgan, this event brought together a powerful group of women pulling the lever to make change for female founders. It was an evening of deal sharing and community. Lynn Loacker said it best: to deploy capital is to exercise a lever of power, and when women investors act collectively, we can make a bigger impact in funding underrepresented founders and in accelerating the solutions they are building.

This event has become a staple within the Austin ecosystem, hosted monthly by Juliette. This iteration was particularly special because there were so many new attendees from out of town. We had over 125 RSVPs!

We can’t thank Marc Nathan enough for being such a generous supporter and advocate, and of course Angie Neas at Justworks for her time, partnership, and sponsorship.

 

Leigh attended the So Ambitious Dinner sponsored by Black Ambition. Founded by Pharrell Williams, Black Ambition is a non-profit initiative working to close the opportunity and wealth gap through entrepreneurship, investing in high-growth startups founded by Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs. The connections forged and insights gained were invaluable.

Brexfast Club

We swung by the Brexfast Club (not that Breakfast Club), Hosted by Brex, Forum Ventures, and Everywhere VC.

Plus even more events with some of our favorite people...

We grabbed coffee on the river with EVCA and enjoyed the JustWorks dinner bringing together a mix of small and large businesses across Austin.

We joined the Springboard Enterprises brunch, and are grateful to be a part of a powerful community advocating for women entrepreneurs as they build and scale some of the world’s most exciting and impactful companies.

We never turn down brunch, so we brunched again with Supply Change Capital at their Female GP Brunch. Thank you to Shayna Harris and Noramay Cadena for hosting, and Jesse M. Gabriel for sponsoring.

 

We had fun outdoors at Midwest House. A big thank you to Nicole McCarthy and the entire World Business Chicago team for organizing one of the most insightful and interesting fireside chats with Midwest investors Sophia Bush and Nia Batts of Union Heritage.

SXSW 2024 was truly special. We connected with old friends, made new ones, met interesting people, enjoyed some amazing meals, and deepened the Artemis community. We’ll see you next year!

Learn more about the companies in our portfolio on our website. If you’re a founder innovating in commerce enablement, fintech, or the care economy, pitch us here!

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