A former PayPal exec and Navy officer co-founded Aequitas Invest, a new venture fund targeting women-owned and women-led AI and enterprise software startups. The fund addresses persistent funding disparity: women-founded companies receive less than 2% of total VC capital despite strong exit multiples.
The fund pools capital from angels, family offices, and institutional LPs frustrated by traditional VC's pattern-matching bias. For portfolio companies, the thesis is operational expertise + access to acquirers and pilots that traditional funds overlook.