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Women, Wealth, and Venture Capital with Anna Mason

39m 34s

Women, Wealth, and Venture Capital with Anna Mason

In this VentureF podcast episode, host Laura Nick Scerson interviews Ona Amasan, Managing Partner of Engaborg Investments, a venture fund within Olivia Walton’s family office. Engaborg focuses on investing in female founders and female-led fund managers, with a thesis centered on “innovation built with women in mind.” Ona shares her career journey from Wall Street distressed bond trading at Lehman Brothers during its bankruptcy to venture capital at Rise of the Rest, where she helped transform a bus tour initiative into a $300M fund targeting overlooked U.S. regions. She highlights key lessons from her Wall Street era, including risk-taking, the importance of people in organizations, and market timing. Engaborg’s structure as a formal fund within a family office reflects a return-centric strategy, benchmarking to top venture capital performance. As an LP, Engaborg backs micro-funds (25M–250M AUM) with 100% female GPs, emphasizing the power of checkwriters to influence which ideas get funded. Ona argues that venture capital has bifurcated into megafunds and micro-funds, with the latter offering true inflection points for 5X returns. She stresses the importance of data-driven, positive conversations about investing in women as a savvy financial strategy, avoiding negative framing. The episode underscores how Engaborg’s work aims to bend the arc of capital allocation, leveraging diverse perspectives to shape future innovation and economic opportunity for women.

Transcription

6363 Words, 35458 Characters

English
[MUSIC] Welcome to VentureF, where the future is female. Join us as we delve into conversations with founders, funders, and financial experts, discovering solutions for creating greater opportunity, gender equity, and wealth for women. [MUSIC] >> Hi, everyone. I'm Laura Nick Scerson, host to the VentureF podcast. Today, we welcome to the podcast on Amasin, Managing Partner of Angaborg Investments, Adventure Investment Fund within the family office of Olivia Walton. Angaborg focuses on investing in female founders and other female lead fund managers. Invest in innovation that is built with women in mind. Ona previously was a Managing Partner at Revolution's Rise of the Rest, Seed Fund, where she worked from 2016 to 2022. While there, Ona helped lead the transformation of Rise of the Rest from a startup community bus to initiative to a fund with 300 million in AUM, and a mandate to find alpha in overlooked US geographies. Ona has 20 years of experience across Wall Street, venture capital, and the storm to world. She received her BA from Harvard College, and her MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business. She was a 2022 presidential leadership fellow, was named a Fortune's 40 under 40 in 2020. Business Insiders list of 100 people transforming business in 2019 and a Washingtonian tech titan in 2017 and 2018. Welcome, Ona, delighted to have you here, Adventure Up today. Thank you for having me, Laura. I'm so happy to be here today. You know, I first heard you speak in 2024 at the Milk and Global Conference on a panel that you put together and moderated this powerhouse group of women called the $700 billion opportunity. And I talked about this panel in a recent episode with Maggie Switech, who is ahead of a research over at Milk and because it had such an impact, this panel you put together and the energy in the run that day, that the Milk and Institute is now launching a three-year study on the flow of capital from women VCs into the economy. Tell me a little bit about the panel, you know, kind of how it came together, and why do you think it was a pivotal moment? Oh, what a dream panel and discussion that was. We truly had such a rockstar group of women, I admire. It was packed. We had Aaron Hartless Moore from Pivotal, Sally Croscheck from L.A.R.R.R.R. It's Gingerbread, Quanza Jones, Tania Allen. I knew that everyone was going to have a lot to talk about and everyone really was going to have a lot of important wisdom and experience to share. And so it was so important to me that we pack a punch into that room. And I think the energy in the room really, hopefully, really bore that out. You know, the inspiration in the backstory, just shortly before Milk in that year, Angleborg had we had just come out with our 2024 annual report, which was centered all around this concept and this framework of investing in what we called the wealth span, which I'll tell you more about later, but it was really an opportunity, I think, to bring industry experts and luminaries from across the operating and the investing paradigm to really discuss the why now around the power, the potential and the reality today of investing in women and why it's more relevant than other than ever as we see this great wealth transfer unfolding. And so I think for us, the goal, I think, but frankly, for everyone, for Milk in, for everyone on that panel, the goal was really to reinforce why investing in women is a savvy financial strategy. A pet peeve of mine is to be on a panel, an incredible conference, where you get put on like the women's panel where all we're going to do is talk about the women's issues. And I think those conversations will always incredibly well-meaning can sometimes spiral in negative ways. And so it was incredibly important to me, especially with the, you know, the privilege and the responsibility of architecting and leading the conversation and moderating it, that we really centered it. It was rooted in data. We focused on how, you know, what we're frameworks to approach investment thesis and analysis. How should we think about topics like stigma and how stigma can permeate so many different, you know, aspects of, you know, the investment opportunity. And then how you see around the corner and actually take that stigma and flip it into not only action, but also opportunity. So, and I think the net result was a very positive and specific and informed conversation. And I'm so, there is nothing better than direct action. And I think collaborative action being born out of conversations that unfold at events. And so to see the way milkin as a global institute has really built out a whole body of work around this. Incredibly inspiring. There were so many incredible hot takes from that conversation. Something that I think has long stood with me was, you know, a final remark that Tanya had made on the stage, which was, you know, never forget to proactively as women put ourselves in other rooms with really strong and powerful and influential women because iron, sharpens iron. And just this framework of iron, sharpens iron, I think is actually, it is one way to describe how and why we show up in the venture world with our thesis to invest in female founders and fund managers. And, you know, I have the same perspective you do. I think there are too many times that we're sitting in rooms or listening to talks. And there's so much emphasis on negative. And I think the more that we can talk about the opportunity, the positive momentum, the change being made, you know, what we're seeing in the economy as a result of dollars flowing through invests, women investors into female founded companies, the changes happening. And it is about aligning with other women who are working towards this in a positive way. So kudos to you. And I was so blown away by that panel. I've been talking about it ever since then. And, you know, and how the energy and the room, nobody wanted to leave that room at the end of the conversation. Everybody was so energized and empowered and inspired by the conversation that day. So it's implied to see that the work continues. And, you know, getting into this conversation, you know, before you and I started this recording, we were talking about women in Wall Street and some of the women who kind of led the way on the corporate side of things. You have a Wall Street background. I mean, how did you get into venture? Right? And what is rise from the rest? Like how did you get into this whole changing your career as well? Yeah. Well, my youngest daughter is a swifty. So when I think about my 20 year career, I tend to break it down into eras as a nod to Taylor. And I've got four professional eras raised by the wolves of Wall Street is how I think about era number one. Not surprisingly Wall Street recovery program is era number two, responsible family life choices, era number three, and life is short. It's era number four and where I'm very grateful to be right now. And I hope to stay for a very long time. And so, you know, my self proclaimed raise by the wolves of Wall Street era. I grew up, I spent most my 20s as a distressed bond trader, loved it dearly learned a tremendous amount. I was actually at Lehman on the distressed desk when the company went bankrupt and became at the time one of the largest bankruptcies in in corporate history. So there were tremendous amount of learnings. I'm so grateful that as I play it forward to the book end of my career, you know, where I spent the last decade in venture. First, it rise the rest. And now at Ingeborg, there's so many interesting, I think, like lessons and parallels that I find myself pulling forward. I often say that venture is the other side of the coin from distressed. Both industries are predicated on very big bets that tend to have very binary outcomes. And so I think lesson number one was really getting comfortable with being in a risk taking seat at a very young age. I think in finance in general, you can think about the two roles as either being a risk taking seat or risk management seat. If you're taking risk, it's not to say you don't also have a deep fiduciary responsibility to be managing it. But it's a different orientation. I think about how you think about risk reward and the trade-offs along that curve. So that was a key, I think, seminal learning that I'm so grateful that I got, it was very deeply cemented early in my career because I went through the Lehman bankruptcy, another foundational learning for me that I was lucky to get so early in my career is that organizations are the sum of their people. At the time, it was a, you know, global firm, tens of thousands of people employed, but on a very micro level, you saw how certain interpersonal relationships and decisions ultimately shaped what happened with that company and how things unfolded. A lesson that I find myself thinking about constantly an early-stage venture, you'll always hear especially an early stage, oh, you have to focus on the team, you have to focus on the founder to really actually have three-dimensional core memories, core professional memories that shape how you think about what it truly means for an organization to be the sum of its people. Another Wall Street lesson. I'm grateful to carry forward to today. And then the final is market timing. You know, so much of trading in the distressed world, you know, security can be priced at $0.75 on the dollar, one day, 20 cents on the dollar the next day in vice versa. And so really understanding and appreciating market timing. And when you get out, can sometimes be just as if not more important than when you get in. I think is another incredibly valuable lesson that I hold close, especially as I think about what's unfolded in the venture markets in these last few years. As liquidity has been crunched from both ends, it's been a lot of market dislocation in what's happened over the last couple of years after the persistent syrup environment that we were all in. And so I'm grateful to have those lessons. It seems like another lifetime, but truly carry it forward to this last decade in venture. And rise the rest was the seven years I spent in venture before before joining Olivia in the family office world at Ingeborg. And you know, rise the rest the brainchild of Steve Case who formerly co-founded and led AOL in the 1.0 era of what unfolded in the technology industry and rise the rest is an incredible both mission and investment thesis to find alpha in unexpected places. And so by extension, the mandate was aggressive early stage co-investment in startups that were headquartered anywhere in the country except they had to be located outside of Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston, where three quarters of venture capital dollars got deployed every year. And so when I think about the common threads of my decade in venture, a geography first strategy at first, a gender-less strategy now, I think the common thread is I'm so privileged to have this point of view where as a first screen, you are partnering with founders who are baseline overlooked, underestimated. I would argue very strongly by extension undervalued for a factor that actually shouldn't be a factor when it comes to, do you credibly see around the bend before others? Do you have a vision for how to reimagine the future? And do you have the skill set and the connectivity to figure out how to actually go make that wild reality possible? And so incredible lessons, I think from both, from both eras that I carry forward now. And into this, life is short-era, the work with Engaborg centers on a gender-first lens of investing, the business case to invest in women and very much so inspired as the mom of two little girls who are now seven and ten and just thinking about how we bend the arc for their future and bike extension for the future of little girls and children more broadly everywhere. Let's pause for a minute. If you are interested in venture capital or angel investing, the VentureF newsletter is for you. We skin the latest news and highlight the best resources to help you on your journey. Our online hub also features a fund directory of over 100 funds with women in investment decision making roles. Sign up at VentureF.com. Engaborg investments is so interesting, not only in your thesis, which I want to talk about in just a second, but the fact that it's a fund within Olivia Walton's family office. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, a little bit about how that's structured, why you guys decided to make it an actual fund. Sometimes family offices just look at investments and just do it across family office. I'm just really curious about the formalization of the fund itself and then tell me about the thesis and what you're investing in a blind. Yeah. Well, it is such, truly, truly such a privilege to work alongside Olivia. Someone I admire so deeply for her work and her leadership across investing, across philanthropy, across the arts. She's many lanes. Engaborg investments and our work in the Venture space is one of those lanes. And I think it's heart, you know, we believe that Venture funding shapes the future. You know, it connects out of the box thinkers with really sometimes significant resources that enables them to take big swings on these bold ideas. And so it truly matters who decides what market needs get met or how these needs even get recognized in the first place. And so we have this foundational thesis and insight, I think, that the plurality of perspective matters in how the future gets reimagined. And when you think about the female perspective and what it means, you know, if I had to boil down Engaborg's thesis, I would say we look for innovation that's built with women in mind. That doesn't mean that we only invest in consumer product or technology that is exclusively and explicitly built for women. We absolutely have a subset of our portfolio that fits that bill. And we also have compelling and not small piece of our portfolio where you'll see product service technology built for everyone. And if it works at scale, you don't have to squint to see how it will also disproportionately improve outcomes, opportunities, and experiences for women. And it's hard. That's really big business. Like we're in the business of, you know, partnering with entrepreneurs and also with fund managers who truly have a unique insight and a unique capability to build that will drive both value creation and value capture. And so we are thinking about that outsized venture return, which takes me full circle to answer your question about, you know, structure and framing. There is oftentimes a lot of flexibility in the family office world. I'm sure if you've spoken of family office folks, you hear the funny joke everyone says if you've talked to one family office, you've talked to one family office because there are truly so many different variations of how you can execute a strategy. For us, the theory of the case is there's a return centric strategy. We are investing in the venture capital asset class. And if we want to benchmark to the best, then we should also have, you know, the plumbing and the infrastructure. That sets us up, you know, to execute against that strategy. So it was simple business model market fit, I guess you could say. If I were to pull the analogy forward, that makes a lot of sense. Also, I think too that you're not just investing in female lead or female founder founded companies, but in your really impressive and interesting portfolio, you've also invested 18 female lead funds. So you're kind of a fund of funds as well. What's the investment criteria for the funds that you're looking at? First taking a step back before I get to the criteria, I think, you know, the inspiration and the strategy that roots it. If the mandate and the thesis is to invest in innovation that's built with women in mind, one A of that strategy is a complimentary mandate to put more money in the hands of more women to bend the arc of who gets funded and what ideas break through. And the data demonstrates very clearly, we think, that who holds the pen and who has checkwriting capability directly affects the downstream implication of who gets funded. And so from a criteria standpoint, I love our LP commit strategy so much. I find it to be a particularly inspiring part of our work that I have the privilege to also show up as an LP in this market. You know, my mental model, my framework for this is venture funds are just startups with different business models. By extension, I think all the same rules apply. And when I think about venture as an industry, I really think it turns on this three-dimensional access, which to me is the three components are access, context, and judgment. Can you get access? Do you have the right context? And what's your best judgment? When you're operating the industry, or you're paid to say no most of the time so that when you say yes, it really matters. And you really have to make those yeses matter. And so sometimes, you know, I think as a first step, we come out of it from that somewhat simplistic but critical framework of just how we think about the business of venture. And then beyond that, you know, we have a handful of somewhat more specific criteria. We tend to look at funds where the GP is 100% female. We look at funds in the microfund space, our technical parameters are anywhere from 25 million in AUM to 250 million in AUM. We tend to average backing funds that are closer to that 50 to 100 million in AUM paradigm. I think fund size is incredibly important as a pillar and a building block for fund strategy, especially in this market environment where I think in a lot of ways, you know, modern venture is 50 years old, 50, 60 years old. One might argue it's going through mid-line crisis of sorts. In a lot of respects, I think venture. has actually bifurcated into two industries. On the one side, you have megafunds who have built some really strong and powerful flywheels around how you weaponize capital. And I say that dispassionally, not in any negative way. It's an incredibly powerful flywheel. I think of how a small number of funds are king makers and queen makers in the space. And then I think you have microphones. And by the way, those megafunds are raising between 50 and 75% of all the capital that LPs are investing into Ventura as an asset class is going to like 30 or so funds. And so when you think about the opportunity, where do you still have that true Ventura inflection point, the ability to underwrite to 50 to 100 X returns for individual investments, it really is at that earlier stage. And the math, the spreadsheet math, like the math truly maths, if you have $25, $50, $100 million fund for how you can really credibly underwrite it to a 5X plus return. And thinking about those returns, a lot of people talk about 3X. I really think you have to be shooting for 5X when you compare venture to other asset classes, especially in the LP commit world, unless you're investing in exclusive dedicated venture only strategy, you have a lot of choices in terms of how you're going to distribute and manage that capital across asset classes. And a 3X return over 10 years in a fund where you are locked up for 10 plus, maybe even 12 years, that's like a little over 11%. I are on an annualized basis. Not awesome when you're thinking about it relative to other strategies. So 5X gets you closer to that 17 to 20% annualized returns. And then you're starting, I really cook with gas. So as I think you can probably hear from my remarks, we are laser focused on the strategy. It's really almost like a micro fund strategy where because of our unique point of view around the full female experience, the female perspective in general, and the downstream implications of checkriders. In capital, we focus exclusively on female fund managers. But it's really, I think, an embedded strategy around how one plus one can equal 11 when it comes to fund investing as a complement to direct investing. - You have some interesting stats on your website. - And I have to complement you too because I look at a lot of fund websites. And you guys have built resources. - Like some really good resources on the website, which I want to talk about too. But I just have to quote this one, 69% of the top quartile VC funds include women decision makers. - Yep, I'm pretty sure. I think that's not good for all rays. (laughing) - Thank you all rays for all the rays. - Yes, we have to keep these positive stats out there in front and center because, you know, really when you look at your thesis and why you guys are investing when you are, you're doing it because it's a good strategy. It's a smart strategy and it makes money. But at the same time, you're also continuing to funnel funds into the ecosystem that help women who are underfunded, undervalued and underestimated, you know, build important companies and important funds. And I love that you said that funds are startups as well. They are. I can't tell you how often I say to founders who are struggling as they're raising money and they're trying to reach VCs and I say to them, you know, the VCs are going through the same thing. They have to raise their funds. (laughing) - They understand. - They understand. - They understand the other side. You know, and about that, that stat, you know, the 69%. It shouldn't be surprising when you take a step back and you think about it because that builds plurality of perspective into the motion and into the DNA of how that fund operates and sources and evaluates and ultimately makes investment decisions. And if you have a more, if you have a marginous investment committee, it's a lot more likely that you'll deploy consensus capital. And listen, you can, it's not necessarily that it's a losing strategy. It's just consensus capital by definition is not going to yield alpha. It's going to give you consensus level returns, which by definition are not, do not equal out performance. And so I think just, you know, this idea that venture demands a plurality of perspectives because ultimately, and it's kind of the great irony, I think of the industry is you pattern match and then you look for things that break the mold. And I think, I think diversity of thought and experience and by extension how you think and how you think about need differently, whether it's from an enterprise or from a consumer standpoint, and you see around the bend before others do, I think that's born from diversity of thought and from experience. And it's important to have those diverse perspectives and that really makes all the difference truly. You know, we talked earlier about the term you guys use wealth span, one of the resources on your site is you do these reports annually. And in 2024, you did a women and wealth, wealth span report. What do you mean by wealth span? And how should we be investing in it? We thank you for checking out our research on our website. We work hard on it. Every year, we dedicate the summer season to some very deep dive research that stacks up to one of the five pillars that we focus on, financial security, career opportunity, better living, motherhood, and women's health. And we do this research, you know, first and foremost, to really come with a prepared mind, to how we want to show up around investment opportunities. You know, I think the two core motions in venture or hunting or gathering. And in general, I think, you know, our orientation is, we want to be hunting as much as possible, not just with a headline view, which we've talked about a little bit, and works headline thesis, but truly, how do you double click into that in a way where you can very credibly say, you know, why us, why now, who cares? Like the why now, I think is incredibly important. So our research really shapes that. And so a couple of years ago, we decided to tackle the financial security sleeve of our work and of our interest area. And that led us to a framework that we called the wealth span. And so the foundational thesis that this was born out of was to say, let's look around at the Fintech market. Unlike, you know, women's health or motherhood, Fintech is not an uninvested, like an under-invested category by any stretch, like a tremendous amount of capital has poured in over the last decade. But if you look just underneath the surface, can you actually look at the user data, for example, of some of these, like some of the largest, and most successful prolific now IPO Fintechs, in particular consumer Fintech side, disproportionately high male user bases, relatively low female user bases. That's not a uniform stat, but it was a common thread that we really wanted to pull on to say, wow, this market that already investors have identified as being demonstrable and quantifiably large, both in terms of value creation and value capture. Imagine how much larger it might be if we actually built for everyone, meaning, let's also make sure we're building products, services, technologies that are built with women in mind. And so that led us to say, you know, how are we actually going to unlock the full financial potential of all women, especially why now, as we're turning the corner on this great wealth transfer by some measures up to $30 trillion in wealth will transfer either intergenerational or between spouses in the next couple of years. Like, it's not only coming, it's happening right now. And so what's the framework that we can use as a new mental model to think about how to dissect the space and then how to evaluate opportunities. So we came up with this framework. We called the wealth span. It was definitely a play on life span and health span from the health care space and the wellness space. And we said very simply to us, wealth span is financial control. And we're defining that. It was almost like a mathematical equation where we said it's access times agency. Access is like, what can I choose? And agency is like, what do I choose? And so how do we then break down financial transitions, financial relationships, financial education, not just for women, for men and women, and then look in a really discerning way at how trends across those lines, transitions, relationships, education, how that can really shape opportunity, opportunity to create an opportunity to invest. And so for example, that led us to really spend time in the financial literacy space. And to understand that by the way, for both boys and girls, hits girls and women in a particularly acute way, that it's not just like what we learned or didn't learn candidly or what we were taught or weren't taught about finances and money from earliest ages. But I think it was also how our relationships with money got coded at really early ages in life. And then it manifests down the line into financial security or the lack thereof. And so for example, that led us to an investment in an early stage campaign called Aura Finance, which is building in the employee benefits space actually, but everything that they're doing, like their product and their vision is rooted in the psychology of money and how you can actually proactively and positively productize the psychology of money in a way that helps people build better behaviors and habits that ultimately map to their goals. So that's a little bit of clouds, forest, trees weeds on how we think about it, but that was our well spent report and then not show. It's a great report. I agree with you. There is a psychology to how we relate and interact with money and it does sort of at a very early age. I can't tell you how many times in this podcast, we talk about this and about how you talk about finance in the home and what your early exposure to it is and how you relate to it really affects long term, how you deal with money and your finances. That's really a fascinating thing. You mentioned this as these reports come out of your summer program. So I'm assuming that's the interns that you guys bring on board in the summers participate in some of this reagent. Yeah, it's, we have been so fortunate to truly have had, you know, year after year, cohort after cohort of just incredible, incredible interns who join us each summer. We'll be on our fourth, fourth internship program this summer. We run it as a pretty focused capstone style program. It's a 10 week program, full time paid internship opportunity where the idea is the intern comes in and helps us really craft and diligence, the research work that goes into these big annual report. I'm a big believer that interns should never just be like running coffee or anything like that, especially in lean organizations in the venture space. You just want to create opportunities where it's an incredible, dedicated on-ramp to an asset class and an industry that I think is notoriously difficult to break into in part because there is not one natural path in. And so it's incredibly important to us that we really create this genuinely useful experience for these interns where they can learn a ton about the space. And for us, we really believe in active learning models where you learn by doing, you learn by participating and we're all incredibly busy and there's a lot to cover. And so we want to create programs and access pathways that are also genuinely intangibly, incredibly helpful to us. So the program is designed to do that. We haven't 100% landed on the topic for the 2026 annual report, but I find myself in this wild moment of both opportunity, I think, and dislocation and disruption that the consumerization of AI has been ushering in in these last few years, just thinking about what it means to future proof ourselves and our work and careers more broadly in this age where like the only way out is going to be through and we all have to lean in and embrace the change not only to grab the possibility, but I think also to shape and to bend what that future looks like. And so I'm pretty sure we're going in that direction in some way. So if you're venture curious and you know, you're an undergrad or a grad student at any college across across the US, we'd love to hear from you. We're super, super grateful. We already have a couple hundred applications, but we're always in the market to talk to incredible and motivated young people who are trying to find their way in the industry. What an incredible opportunity. And I'm sure we will get some more interest from people listening to this podcast. Last thing I want to talk about that's on your website that I just have such an affinity for is that now the second time you guys have updated your list. It's a searchable list of 200 women investors, 200 women deploying capital and venture. We have a fund directory on the venture side as well that specifically of women deploying capital in venture. I think it's so great. These lists need to be everywhere. And I love that yours has the headshot. You can see who these women are. You can see what they're doing and how they're contributing back to the ecosystem. Maybe on a maybe at some point we just merge the list. The whole point is for people to be able to find these women, look at that opportunity to invest in these funds. And also I think on the other side for founders who are trying to figure out strategically how to reach out to potential investors and really be smart about how they're doing that by doing the preliminary research. So thank you for creating this list. I have a feeling or some are in terms of how to handle this as well. So we actually do this personally. You do? It's a personal thing. Oh my gosh. It's so much work. A labor of love. It's like, does the world need another list? I don't know. But I aspire for Ingeborg to show up as a tentic spanner in the market. We're so cognizant of the deep expertise and the voices I think that show up across the venture landscape, the institutional allocator landscape, the LP landscape. We try to come from first principles of, is this useful? Does it add value to whom and why? And so the list is really a little bit of an open sourcing of a snapshot of the women LP's. I get the deep privilege to spend time getting to know whether it's for co-investment opportunities on the direct side or LP commit opportunities on the LP side. And the list is great for me to have. It is so much better and so much more useful. I hope if we can share it in a way where it becomes a discovery tool, both for LP's who are trying to find new opportunities for fund investments and also for founders who are trying to be more critical and discerning in potential matches as they look for investors. So it's a labor of, we love to do it. We have a couple other lists that we're cooking up for this year, but it's very much so born from the spirit of, we're so grateful to spend our time and our days in these communities. And they're valuable and treasured relationships to us, but I think they're so much more useful if they're shared in open sourced in ways that can be more broadly beneficial to people. I completely agree with you. Our list is a labor of love as well. It's deeply personal and we really do put women on the list that we want to make sure other people are paying attention to. So yeah, so I love when like we're all working for the same thing. Cheers to that. Cheers to that. Cheers to that. Cheers to that. It's so good. Well, we're in a new year. We're in 2026. I know when we first started talking, we were talking about how we're looking at this year and spending our time. You're often on the speaker circuit. Are you? Are you doing more speaking this year? Are you focusing your energy elsewhere? What's on the horizon for Ingleborg in 2026? Yeah, you know, in the spirit of trying to show up as Tentic Spanders, I'm always grateful for the opportunity where we can talk about the thesis in a one-to-many format. And as a future cast in Golsat for 2026, I'm actually really excited to spend more time intentionally in smaller communities, lunches, dinners that center around affinity, whether it's interest area, modality, geography. I'm pretty keen to be an active participant in those spaces that I think really foster close connectivity. So I'm sure we will see each other out on the circuit. At some point this year, probably more than once, my intentionality this year is really about spending dedicated time in smaller spaces. It was such a privilege and such a joy to get to know you better today. Thank you so much for sharing your story, talking about the work that you're doing and your why. With all of us today, really, really appreciate you and appreciate everything that you guys are undertaking at Ingleborg investments. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Mutual Admiration Society for sure. To learn more about Anna Mason or Ingleborg investments, follow her on LinkedIn or go to Ingleborg that's IN-GE-BORG-investments.com or visit our episode recap on VentureF.com where you will find Anna's bio and links to all of the pertinent info discussed here today. You'll also find Ingleborg investments listed in our fund directory. Thanks for listening to VentureF today. To discover and listen to other podcast episodes and sign up for our weekly newsletter, visit us at VentureF.com or follow us on Instagram @ventureFpodcast. New episodes of VentureF are out every Friday.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Ona Amasan is Managing Partner of Engaborg Investments, a venture fund within the Walton family office that invests in female founders and female-led fund managers.
  2. She previously led Rise of the Rest, a fund focused on overlooked U.S. geographies outside Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston.
  3. Engaborg’s thesis is “innovation built with women in mind,” targeting ventures that improve outcomes for women or benefit all users while disproportionately helping women.
  4. As an LP, Engaborg backs micro-funds (25M–250M AUM) with 100% female GPs, aiming for 5X returns through early-stage investments.
  5. Ona’s career spans Wall Street (distressed bond trading at Lehman), venture capital, and family office investing, emphasizing risk-taking, market timing, and organizational dynamics.

Summary:

In this VentureF podcast episode, host Laura Nick Scerson interviews Ona Amasan, Managing Partner of Engaborg Investments, a venture fund within Olivia Walton’s family office. S. regions.

She highlights key lessons from her Wall Street era, including risk-taking, the importance of people in organizations, and market timing. Engaborg’s structure as a formal fund within a family office reflects a return-centric strategy, benchmarking to top venture capital performance. As an LP, Engaborg backs micro-funds (25M–250M AUM) with 100% female GPs, emphasizing the power of checkwriters to influence which ideas get funded.

Ona argues that venture capital has bifurcated into megafunds and micro-funds, with the latter offering true inflection points for 5X returns. She stresses the importance of data-driven, positive conversations about investing in women as a savvy financial strategy, avoiding negative framing. The episode underscores how Engaborg’s work aims to bend the arc of capital allocation, leveraging diverse perspectives to shape future innovation and economic opportunity for women.

FAQs

Angaborg Investments focuses on investing in female founders and female-led fund managers, targeting innovation built with women in mind.

Ona was a Managing Partner at Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund from 2016 to 2022, helping transform it into a $300 million AUM fund investing in overlooked US geographies.

The wealth span framework is a concept from Angaborg's 2024 annual report that centers on investing in women, highlighting the opportunity during the great wealth transfer.

Ona prefers focusing on opportunity and data rather than negative issues, to reinforce that investing in women is a savvy financial strategy and avoid unproductive discussions.

Her time as a distressed bond trader taught her risk-taking, organizational dynamics, and market timing, which apply to venture's binary outcomes and early-stage investing.

Angaborg backs funds that are 100% female-led, with AUM between $25 million and $250 million, typically averaging $50-$100 million, focusing on microfunds for potential 5X returns.

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