Catherine Gray has devoted her career to female empowerment through finance. She hosts Invest in Her, a popular weekly podcast.
She founded She Angel Investors, a multimedia platform that connects women to funding and investment resources, and co-founded She Angels Foundation, a nonprofit offshoot that awards grants to grassroots, female-founded organizations. She has a TEDx talk, helped start a gay cable network and produced several award-winning documentaries and off-Broadway shows.
She is a multi-hyphenate on a mission. Her latest producing project, the documentary “Show Her the Money,” tackles gender inequity in the testosterone-heavy world of venture capital. “It’s been a predominately male-run arena. Not many women have been led into the venture capital world, and that’s what the film is doing” Gray said.
“Show Her the Money” educates and inspires women to take action by pulling back the curtain on venture capital and angel investing. The film tells the stories of female founders searching for investments in their innovative ideas, and their interactions with the female funders – or “rock stars” as Gray calls them – who are methodically and purposefully shaping the world with their bank accounts.
A big believer in the power of film and television to change culture, Gray knew a documentary was the best way to demystify the world of venture capital for women. “We had to explain it in an entertaining way,” she said. We wanted women to “walk out of the film understanding what venture capital is, how exciting it is, how important it is to the future of the world,” she said.
Leveling the playing field
According to the film, less than two percent of all venture capital funding goes to women. “We should not be settling for that,” Gray said.
Educating women is the first step to get them a bigger piece of that pie, Gray said. “I’ve found that a lot of really smart, intelligent people I knew didn’t really know [a lot] about venture capital,” she said. The film, she hopes, serves as an entertaining, accessible gateway into the importance of funding female entrepreneurs and innovators.
“Show Her the Money” pushes women to look beyond traditional financial tools like stocks, CDs and real estate to what’s possible to achieve through venture capital.
“People make billions of dollars on companies before they ever hit the public market. By the time they hit the public market, there’s very little profit to be made,” Gray said. She wants women to understand “how exciting [the world of venture capital] is, how accessible it is, and how they should have it as part of their wealth-building portfolio.”
What’s more, she wants women to understand that the upside of venture capital is much bigger than just building wealth. Venture capital is an incredibly impactful way to influence and shape the world and champion people you believe in.
“You’re going to be among the first to know what’s coming down the pike, and you’ll be voting with your money as to what those products and services are going to look like and how they will affect your personal life and your family,” Gray said.
Many of the female funders Gray knows are “out there raising $25 (million), $50 (million), $100 million to invest in women, and most of them also invest in BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other overlooked communities,” Gray said. “There are all these entrepreneurs who wouldn’t be getting funding if it wasn’t for [these] women.”
You don’t need millions of dollars to make an impact, either. It’s possible to make noticeable ripples in the world of venture capital by moving as little as $25,000 from an IRA or pension fund into a women’s founders fund. “I think a lot of people have a misconception that venture capital investing is only for super wealthy people,” Gray said.
The future is female
“Show Her the Money” is coming off a hugely successful, in-person 100-city tour. But Gray is far from done with her mission to educate women about the world-changing power of their wallets.
“The goal is always to continue the conversation and continue reaching out to more and more people,” she said. To that end, “Show Her the Money” is now available to large groups and corporations for streaming, and Gray is exploring a documentary series as well.
She’s also moving the message into classrooms.
“We are creating an educational program for colleges, universities, and high schools, so that people will be able to learn about venture capital at a young age, and what the career path is, what the investment opportunity is, and how to get funding for their entrepreneurial ideas,” she said.
She’s also reaching across the aisle to include men. One of the male investors in “Show Her the Money,” inspired by the movie and motivated to make the world better for his daughter, launched a women’s founders fund for female tech founders. “He said [the fund] is absolutely because of seeing the film and being made aware of this,” Gray said.
Although she’s thrilled for wins like these, Gray won’t be happy until at least 50 percent of venture capital funding goes to women. The only way to get there? Continue to show women the money.
For more information about the film, upcoming events and workshops, and additional resources, visit showherthemoneymovie.com.
Read more on Women of Impact: Sana Kapadia on pioneering gender-smart climate funds | Santia Deck and a revolution in impact investing | more articles in this series here.
