Alison Alvarez doesn’t talk about her daughter when she’s pitching her software company to potential investors.
For Alvarez, it’s the unspoken fear that – if she has a family – she’ll not be taken seriously. So, she keeps the conversation about business.
“There should be a wide variety of venture capitalists, but there isn’t,” said Alvarez, 38, CEO of the Pittsburgh-based BlastPoint. “Sometimes, it can be a little harder to tell your story.
“There should be more of us,” she added, “but there aren’t.”
Women entrepreneurs in the Pittsburgh region say they face obstacles to raising capital that their male counterparts don’t. It’s for this reason Yvonne Campos created the Next Act Fund, a women-focused investment fund by and for female entrepreneurs. The organization also holds regular seminars to educate women on investing.
Campos, who founded a Pittsburgh market research company in 1986, anticipates having a second investing round next year.
With an average investment of between $50,000 and $75,000, the fund has raised $3.5 million and, to date, funded more than a dozen businesses.
Roughly seven in 10 of the fund’s investments go to women entrepreneurs, including Alvarez’s BlastPoint in January. BlastPoint uses artificial intelligence to create cost savings by conducting predictive analysis about the customers and places that generate business in utility, franchise, retail and the nonprofit industries.
While the upcoming Next Fund Act II is a result of the buzz on the first round, the women-focused investment fund was an afterthought.
Marion Lewis, a self-described serial entrepreneurial, had started three businesses, but struggl