In a financial world long dominated by a single perspective, a quiet shift is taking place — one being led by women at the helm of venture and private equity firms. These female-led funds aren’t just diversifying leadership tables; they’re redefining what value creation looks like across markets.
Female-led funds remain dramatically undercapitalized, yet consistently overdeliver. They’re not just catching up — they’re outperforming, uncovering new markets, and reshaping the narrative of who gets funded and why. Despite systemic barriers, they continue to demonstrate resilience and an uncanny ability to identify high-growth opportunities that others overlook. This isn’t merely about closing a gender gap in funding — it’s about seizing an untapped opportunity.
The Data Speaks, Loudly
Let’s start with the facts:
Female GPs raise less than 3% of global venture capital.
Yet companies founded by women deliver more than twice as much revenue per dollar invested than those founded by men.
A Kauffman Fellows report found that female-founded unicorns exit one year faster on average, and generate higher ROI across both early and growth-stage funds.
This isn’t just about doing the right thing — it’s about making smart investment decisions. The gap between access and performance is one of the most overlooked inefficiencies in today’s market. There lies a real opportunity in correcting this imbalance, which could unlock returns previously inaccessible to traditional investors.
The Pattern Recognition Gap: Why Representation in Capital Matters
Fund managers shape the future by choosing which problems get solved. Yet only around 17% of decision-makers at U.S. VC firms are women. Fewer than 3% of U.S. private equity firms are female led. That’s not just inequity — that’s a missed opportunity.
Female-led funds bring different lived experiences to the table, which translates to different pattern recognition. They’re more likely to back startups led by women and people of color, and more likely to fund categories traditionally overlooked by mainstream funds – maternal health, elder care, consumer products tailored to women, sustainability, and more.
These aren’t “niche” sectors. They’re trillion-dollar markets hiding in plain sight.
Different Eyes, Better Outcomes
Female fund managers often look where others don’t. They invest in pain points others miss. They back markets too “niche” to attract mainstream capital — until those markets explode. Female GPs tend to have an acute understanding of consumer-driven needs, especially in sectors where gendered insights are crucial.
Consider:
Rethink Impact, whose portfolio spans climate tech, digital health, and education, with a laser focus on scalable impact and returns.
GingerBread Capital, investing in companies at the intersection of innovation and inclusion, catalyzing syndicates of next-gen investors.
Chingona Ventures, led by a Latina GP who turns overlooked cultural insights into high-growth market bets.
Their advantage isn’t just empathy. It comes from lived experience and distinctive networks that offer perspectives the market often overlooks, creating space for new opportunities and long-term value. The diversity of their investment strategies leads to better portfolio performance, and ultimately, a broader societal impact.
The Ripple Effects Are Real
Backing female fund managers does more than change cap tables; it changes systems. It diversifies the founder landscape. It shapes product decisions. It creates employment pipelines, board appointments, and new wealth centers. When women lead funds, they fund differently, hire differently, and build differently.
Consider this:
BBG Ventures has backed 80+ companies, several of which have exited to unicorn status, all while focusing on underserved categories like women’s health, sustainability, and future-of-work tech.
Backstage Capital deployed $20M across 200+ companies led by underestimated founders, directly challenging the myth of “pipeline problems.” Backstage has helped break down barriers that often prevent diverse founders from entering the venture space, proving that underrepresented entrepreneurs bring high potential for growth.
These aren’t just stats, they’re signals. They show what becomes possible when power shifts.
The Future Is Female (and Profitable)
Female-led funds are already delivering returns, building industries, and setting new standards for what inclusive innovation looks like. The question is no longer whether they belong at the table — but who’s paying attention?
Because the best opportunities don’t announce themselves. They show up as something unfamiliar. And those who spot them early? They shape the future.
If you’re interested in learning more about Bespoke’s approach to private wealth management and how we can help you build a secure financial future, we invite you to reach out to us directly. We’d be happy to set up a confidential consultation at your convenience.
Thank you for considering Bespoke as your partner in wealth management. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you.
This information is intended for general educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or investment advice.
Preparing Heirs for Responsibility, Not Just Access
Many of our clients express concerns about preparing their heirs for what they perceive to be the social responsibility of inheriting wealth. While not all clients share this view, those who do tend to feel particularly strongly about the need to prepare their descendants for this responsibility, which often translates to philanthropy. This article addresses how families with this worldview can prepare younger generations for inheriting wealth in a socially responsible manner.
A Simple Life Lesson
The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University conducts extensive research on philanthropic behaviors across lifespan. This seems intuitive enough, but their studies consistently suggest that early exposure to philanthropic activities can significantly influence one’s propensity to engage in giving and volunteering in adulthood.
Years ago, a colleague described to me the steps she took to educate her young children in social responsibility and philanthropy. In addition to modeling with her own giving, once each of her children attained eight years of age, during the holidays that child would be “given” $50 to donate to charity. My colleague would also teach that child how to use charitynavigator.org and guidestar.org to research the charities that most efficiently address the causes the child wished to support.
In this way, her children not only learned about philanthropy, but they also learned the importance of evaluating charities so they could give more effectively. As her children grew older, my colleague would periodically increase their annual charity allocation until, upon attaining 18, she would give $500 to the child for a donation to his or her favorite charity or charities. This simple lesson provides the framework for how the family can educate younger family members about social responsibility.
The Role of Legal Structures in Teaching Social Responsibility
Private Foundations
Wealthy families typically have at least one legal structure through which socially responsible education can take place. Historically, wealthy families have used private foundations as the cornerstone for this education. With a private foundation, heirs could serve as members of the foundation’s Board of Directors or, alternatively, could serve in a more limited advisory role (e.g., to determine specific grant recipients) to the Board. In this way, young family members can begin learning about philanthropy – and seeing its impact – before reaching their teen years.
However, utilizing a private foundation for this education has limitations. First, members of the Board have a fiduciary duty that is often overlooked. Thus, placing minors in this position is ill advised. Moreover, a role with the family’s private foundation is, at best, limited to that foundation’s charitable activities. If it is a grant-making foundation, the activities are limited to its grants; if it is an operating foundation, the heirs may also be able to experience the “hands on” charitable work being done by that foundation.
Regardless of the type of foundation (operating vs. non-operating), involving heirs in only the foundation has additional limitations. First, the family’s philanthropy is often accomplished through multiple avenues, not just a foundation. For example, the family may have one or more charitable trusts. Thus, the foundation offers only limited transparency into the family’s total philanthropy.
In addition, many wealthy families also utilize impact investing to create a social impact with their non-philanthropic assets. By definition, involvement limited to the family’s foundation can, at best, provide visibility only to the investments of the foundation. Since foundations frequently encompass only a fraction of the family’s wealth, visibility limited to the foundation does not give heirs a complete picture of how the family’s wealth – not just its philanthropic dollars – are impacting society. Ideally the heirs have transparency as to the totality of the family’s impact, with at least some say in the areas impacted.
As an aside, Donor Advised Funds have gained in popularity in recent years due to their simplicity, reduced costs, and lack of compliance headaches as compared to private foundations. In theory, an heir’s participation in the family’s donor advised fund would be substantially similar to their participation as an advisory member of the family’s private foundation’s board.
Private Trust Companies
A relatively recent legal development, the advent of Private Trust Companies, is changing how family’s address philanthropy and thus social responsibility with intergenerational wealth. A Private Trust Company (PTC) is a trust company controlled by the family and established specifically to serve as the trustee of the family’s irrevocable trusts. (PTCs are in response to the perceived conflict, particularly with younger generations far removed from trust creators, between descendants, on the one hand, and trustees, on the other.)
PTCs are currently available by statute in only a limited number of jurisdictions, but most of these jurisdictions not coincidentally are also the top U.S. trust jurisdictions due to their favorable trust laws. Our preferred PTC jurisdictions are Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming, but others also have merit.
General PTC management is provided by a Board of Managers, typically comprised of family members and independent outsiders, including an administrator in the selected jurisdiction. Significantly, the family can select which jurisdiction’s laws are most appropriate and advantageous for them, given their assets, goals and objectives, desire for a regulated versus unregulated PTC, etc.
More granular PTC management is provided by a handful of PTC committees, which often include the following:
Philanthropy Committee
Investment Committee
Owner Education and Family Governance Committee
Discretionary Distribution Committee
Amendment Committee
Audit Committee
The first three of the committees listed above may be limited to family members, and the Philanthropy and Investment Committees in particular create the opportunity to give heirs a holistic view of the family’s philanthropy and socially impactful investments; as the heirs age, their participation can increase accordingly, giving them increased visibility in their areas of interest. For younger heirs, sub-committees allow targeted, limited participation in these key areas.
Also relevant here, the Owner Education and Family Governance Committee creates the framework for participation and decision-making going forward. More specifically, this Committee develops the family’s policies and guiding vision and values that regulate family members’ roles, rights, and responsibilities with the family enterprise and with each other. The overall goal of these activities is to prevent the splintering of the family and family enterprise in future generations. Studies show that the potential splintering of the family is far more likely to dissipate intergenerational wealth than loss of capital, particularly as the family moves multiple generations away from the original wealth builder(s).
Conclusion
The legal structure(s) adopted by the family can have a significant impact on younger family members’ understanding of social responsibility and philanthropy. More so than a private foundation, a private trust company can give the family an ideal training ground for teaching social responsibility, and PTCs provide multiple avenues for encouraging areas of interest, including philanthropy and investments via committees and sub-committees. When generational wealth is at play, a PTC can provide a structure that encourages family harmony over generations, reducing the likelihood of wealth dissipation.
PTCs are not a panacea, however, and there are hard costs and administrative burdens the family should consider. But under the right circumstances, a PTC may provide the best structure for family involvement in social responsibility, while also providing a succession vehicle for the family’s intergenerational wealth.
The Bespoke Group provides strategic guidance at every step—helping you design an ideal structure and personalized giving strategy that reflects your values, ideals, and passions. We work closely with you to ensure that both your structure and philanthropy drive meaningful impact in the areas that matter most.
If you’re interested in learning more about Bespoke’s approach to private wealth management and how we can help you build a secure financial future, we invite you to reach out to us directly. We’d be happy to set up a confidential consultation at your convenience.
Thank you for considering Bespoke as your partner in wealth management. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you.
This information is intended for general educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or investment advice.
“The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing.”
– Alan Watts
Affluent American families are increasingly confronting difficult questions as the nation’s global position shifts. The familiar sense of geopolitical and economic certainty is giving way to a more fluid, fragmented world. This unease is not merely emotional—it reflects structural changes long forecast by experienced observers such as Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates. In his widely followed analyses of the “Changing World Order,” Dalio maps out how declining empires, rising powers, and cycles of debt and conflict shape the global landscape.
For many families, these aren’t abstract concepts. They are real, immediate, and pressing.
Strategy Provides Structure, But Mindset Drives Resilience
At Bespoke, we support families as they respond to this new era with thoughtful and flexible approaches. We help them design:
Investment strategies in hard assets, stable currencies, and globally resilient companies.
Estate structures that protect assets and privacy, and enable global custody.
Citizenship diversification, including investments that support multiple passports.
These tools are powerful. They provide a sense of agency in uncertain conditions. Yet even when a family is well-positioned structurally, a deeper unease can persist. That discomfort is not a flaw—it’s a signal. Once the tactical decisions are made, more fundamental questions often emerge. What is our role in this new world? What are we trying to preserve? And for whom?
The Role of Discomfort in Strategic Clarity
Alan Watts, a 20th-century philosopher, suggested that our desire for security may itself be the root of our anxiety. True peace, he argued, does not come from eliminating uncertainty, but from learning to live well within it. This insight has become particularly relevant for families stewarding generational wealth.
In our experience, resilience is not simply about predicting the future or defending against risk. It is about cultivating the capacity to engage uncertainty with discipline and openness.
Imagine a family that owns a historic ranch in Montana. News breaks that the government may sell nearby public land. A traditional response might involve immediate legal challenges or a decision to sell. But pausing—allowing space to explore the situation more deeply—might yield something far more valuable. Perhaps a philanthropic land trust emerges, or a regenerative agriculture partnership. What initially felt like a threat may reveal a powerful opportunity for stewardship and leadership.
This is the difference between reacting quickly and responding wisely.
Wealth as a Compass, Not Just a Shield
At Bespoke, we believe wealth should serve not only as a buffer from volatility but as a directional tool. It allows our clients to remain open, to explore different paths, and to lead with intention. This shift from control to curiosity is subtle but transformative.
We encourage families to adopt frameworks that reflect this mindset:
Dynamic scenario planning, not rigid predictions.
Trust structures with guardrails, not cages.
Global mobility, paired with grounded presence.
Investment frameworks that reflect values, not just returns.
These are not only tactical choices. They are reflections of a deeper orientation toward complexity—an acknowledgment that certainty is often an illusion, and that strength lies in adaptability.
Preparing for the Unknown
In a time defined by disruption, the families who flourish will not be the ones who chase clarity at all costs. They will be the ones who invest in the capacity to move through ambiguity with clarity of purpose and strength of character.
Security is not about knowing what comes next. It is about knowing you are prepared to meet whatever comes, with courage, insight, and a trusted structure of support.
If you’re interested in learning more about Bespoke’s approach to private wealth management and how we can help you build a secure financial future, we invite you to reach out to us directly. We’d be happy to set up a confidential consultation at your convenience.
Thank you for considering Bespoke as your partner in wealth management. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you.
This information is intended for general educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or investment advice.
