“That shows the power of a parent’s influence in your life. My dad actually spoke to the TV show producer when they were already wrapping up auditions, and the director gave me a chance. It changed my whole trajectory. I got it and did really well. Just having that encouragement as a young kid changed my life. Being in the media at nine years old, I spoke with politicians. I met the general manager of Dutch Lady, who happened to be a woman–at a young age, I was seeing female leadership.

“I volunteered with UNICEF back in the day, and at 16, I was sent to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to speak on children's rights in media. I wasn’t always the confident person I am today, but that self-confidence came from rising to the occasion, whatever the stakes were, and also having an appreciation that, even as one person, you can make a difference, you can do more. I’ve always had that same lens of creating impact in all I do, and so much of that has carried over to today,” she adds.

In her early 20s, Chen-Spellings was passionate about inspiring other women to succeed and thrive but was surprised to see a need for more women in leadership positions in investment and venture capital. This lack of female representation in senior corporate leadership led her to co-found Lean In Malaysia with her co-founder, Abir Abdul Rahim.

Today, part of what Chen-Spellings and her team do at Beyond The Billion is track data on how female-founded businesses perform and how much capital is invested in these US businesses. “We have tracked that women are exiting (selling their company to an investor) quicker and have higher evaluations; they are more capital-efficient, and burn rates are much lower, especially in a time of crisis. Years ago, I was putting data out there of McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group studies. Now, VCs don’t even have to refer to those numbers. They’re coming back to me saying, ‘We ran the numbers and found that there are three times higher revenues when we have a woman in the senior leadership team and higher retention rates’.

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“When you have diverse leadership, your results will speak for themselves. Sometimes people ask me, do I think women are better? My answer is, ‘We’ll probably get to a point where we will have women that are mediocre in leadership, but right now, we’re so far from there.’ Think about how hard it is for women to get to these positions in the first place. What you’re getting, the women you eventually see, are the creme de la creme. They’re going to outperform by leaps and bounds, and that is the reality that we’re seeing today.”   

In this chat with Tatler, Chen-Spellings shares her goals for the next phase of Beyond the Billion and why she’s committed to the long game when working towards greater gender equality and diversity in the venture funding space.

Tell us about what milestones you're proud of for Beyond The Billion today.

Phase 1 of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women was really a global capital campaign, where we pledged a billion dollars into the hands of female-founded companies in under two years. Around US$638 million has been deployed into nearly 800 female-founded companies, 11 of which are unicorns, from Melanie Perkins' Canva to Everly Health in the US. We have a drone company started by a husband and wife team here in Malaysia, and they are, I believe, Number One today as a drone company that offers data-as-a-service. The drones are used to improve yields in plantations, and they’ve built software to support that. They started in Malaysia, but they’re truly global, bringing in really strong revenues and thinking about an IPO next. These are real, serious innovations that women are bringing to the table.

The second phase is where we realised that the limited partners needed to be part of the conversation so they would make diversity a condition of their capital. We had roundtables to bring chief investment officers and other investors together to talk about what systemic change we can create. We spoke to some of the top foundations to think about what may not work anymore and how we should rethink investment criteria. Part 3 is on how Beyond The Billion can play a role in the direct deployment of capital in female-founded businesses. We will announce a couple of vehicles very soon where we’ll deploy into female founders and the funds that invest in them. So stay tuned for that!

What kind of change have you seen as a result of your efforts and the work done by Beyond the Billion? 

We've built what I think is the beginning of a huge change we’re experiencing with the gender venture funding gap. We work with venture funds to gender-diversify within their firms. This is part of my theory of change, where we need to mainstream diversity. To get the best results, we need people with different perspectives and that comes from all sorts of diversity; including gender diversity and diversity of ethnicity, age, and multigenerational teams. The benefit of multigenerational teams are profound. For example in our firm, my co-founder Shelly Porges’ message resonates with the parents who have amassed the wealth, mine resonates with the next generation, so it’s complementary.

If the data shows that female-founded businesses are a great investment, what are the biggest challenges or barriers still hindering their progress in attaining venture capital? 

Looking at the numbers as a starting point, the aggregate dollars going into women-founded companies have increased. Through Covid, there was an explosion of capital, and women would get some part of that. Still, unfortunately, the proportion that was going into women-founded companies has taken a step back. From 2.2 per cent, it’s now about 2.1 per cent. It seems small, but one per cent of a multibillion industry is huge. Why? One reason is that women are not getting the later stage cheques.

If you think about a startup’s journey, it goes through pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds. At this stage, you’re raising maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, maybe getting friends and family or some angel investors. But only some come from this position of privilege where you can call Dad to ask him to wire the money. At the later stage, it’s a whole different type of network—we’re talking about corporates, endowment foundations—do they have that sort of access? That’s a different thing altogether. So they’re not going to Series B and beyond and not getting the later stage growth cheques.

We also don’t have that many female general partners in venture capital funds (though the numbers are increasing tremendously). Women in the decision-making and equity positions to run the funds that would invest in women are lacking.

What changes do you want to see in the public conversation about the gender venture funding gap?  

The fact that we still think that investing in women is ‘a women’s issue’ is flawed in itself. When we remove the stereotypes surrounding women, it empowers men, too. Men are not weak for being more empathetic with their staff. In fact, empathetic leadership through these times is what we need. Women can be strong and maybe even a bit more military—some female leaders like that. We can all benefit from that diversity. Part of our tagline in Beyond The Billion is ‘Driving returns through diversity’. And we’ve definitely seen that through what we do.

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