Charting What’s Next: A New Chapter for FIC

1 Year Down, An Exciting Future Ahead

Author

FIC Team
April 15, 2025

Reflecting on Our Inaugural Year & What’s to Come

Reflections, Rebrand, and What’s Ahead!

Our inaugural year was a remarkable one thanks to our incredible and growing community of women investors. As we step into our 2nd year, we’ve rebranded to Female Investors Club (FIC), formerly known as Female Funders Club (FFC), but our mission remains the same - encouraging, educating, and empowering women in venture investing and capital allocation.

For those new to our community, FIC is a dynamic group of female investors allocating private capital in tech. Our members include VCs, Family Offices, Angels, LPs, wealth managers, private equity professionals, and endowments, as well as women embarking on their tech investment journeys.

A Look Back

In our first year, we hosted 17 curated events with nearly 1,000 attendees across Los Angeles and New York City. Our investor panels covered everything from Deep Tech to Applied AI to Fintech to Insurtech to Positive Tech and even topics such as Managing Family Offices.

Beyond education and insights, we strengthened investor networks, increased deal flow for female tech investors, ensured representation on panels, and, of course, had a great time doing it all! We can’t wait to build on this momentum and continue growing our community.

A highlight was our International Women’s History Month event in New York, hosted in partnership with FD Global Connections and Vector at iHeartMedia. This gathering brought together an extraordinary group of investors & founders, fostering meaningful connections and conversation around the state of VC.

Panelists Jenn Byrne (GRIT Capital Partners), Lenore Champagne Beirne (Bright Ventures), Sutian Dong (Multitudes Ventures), Sara Vinall (iHeartMedia ventures), Rashida Bobb (Mastercard) hosted by Trena Blair (FD Global Connections)

What’s Coming Up?

Join us at our upcoming events - we can’t wait to see you there!

Spotlight Corner

As a community built on empowering female investors, our newsletter would not be complete without a space to showcase awesome women and their achievements! This edition, we are celebrating…

Elsa Mou

Venture Partner
Orion Opportunity Fund

Elsa Mou invests across tech and AI hardware. After building and exiting a manufacturing business, she returned to venture capital as a Venture Partner at Orion Opportunity Fund, focusing on growth stage investments in deep tech and AI hardware. Elsa is also Director of Investments for Hannover Pacific Family Offices, a multi-family office investing across PE/VC funds, real estate, crypto, and public markets with a focus on semiconductors.

An MBA graduate from Wharton,  Elsa combines extensive experience in private equity, venture capital, and family office investments with a founder’s perspective to drive value creation.

Through her investments, public speaking engagements, and mentorship, Elsa continues to shape the future of AI while empowering women to lead in this dynamic space.

“As an AI investor, I’ve seen how quickly applications in the space evolve, creating both opportunities and challenges. That’s why I also focus on the foundational “infrastructure” of AI—whether it’s tooling, agent infrastructure, or semiconductor fabrication. These areas play a critical role in supporting AI’s growth, and I find they often offer long-term, defensible advantages alongside the innovation happening at the application layer.”

Elsa’s Take on Investing

We’re accepting nominations - reply to this email to submit incredible women in your network that deserve a shout out!

What are we reading/listening to?

P.S. we love recs - hit reply and send us any awesome content you’re consuming!

How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back

by Marshall Goldsmith & Sally Helgesen

Kirsten Green’s $500M Bet on ConsumerAI

by Minus One Podcast

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

by Dr. Fei-Fei Li

FUN FACT

Ashley Smith raises $13M debut fund, Vermilion Cliffs Ventures, as a solo GP.

[NOT SO] FUN FACT

The share of total VC deal value for startups with a female co-founder dipped from 25.1% to 21.7% for the first time since 2020.

Source: PitchBook

Standing Together: Supporting Those Affected by the LA Fires

Our hearts go out to our friends, neighbors, and all those affected by the devastating fires in Los Angeles and Altadena. In times like these, community support is more important than ever. If you find yourself in a position to offer support, please take a look at this list of organizations where you can contribute to relief efforts and aid those in need.

A Heartfelt Thank You

Thank you to all our sponsors and partners! None of this would have been possible without you. If you’re interested in partnering with us, let’s chat!

Reply

or to participate.