Women Who Lead: Sarah Barber, CEO of Jenson Ventures

Founded in 2013 and with 11 exits and counting, Jenson Ventures is a venture capital fund with a track record of nurturing early-stage businesses to success. But growing young organisations is only part of the Jenson story – led by CEO Sarah Barber, it has a proven record backing female-led and mixed-led enterprises.

“Five years ago, we did an exercise that looked into gender and ethnicity, and 18% of our founders since we started were female,” says Sarah. “That was proportionate – 18% of the founders that were coming to us had a female founder and we invested in 18%.”

She continues: “Our stats with female founders were 42% last year, and I think it’s gone up little bit more since we’ve done our last survey and again that is proportionate to the number of females that come to us for investment.”

Widening the deal flow:

For Jenson, the way to improve gender equality isn’t to simply prioritise capital investment applications from organisations with female founders over male-led businesses. Instead, it involves increasing the proportion of female founders that apply, which means getting the message out to the grass roots entrepreneurs.

“There’s always been this issue with females looking for funding, so we need to encourage the pipeline and the deal flow to come through rather than just saying we need to invest in 50% female founders,” explains Sarah. “It all comes down to education, so we’ve gone into schools, we’ve gone into universities. There is a socioeconomic element to it as well – when I was at school, VC was something from a different planet.”

Being inclusive internally is part of the Jenson approach. The team is small but diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background making it likelier founders coming to Jenson will see people they can relate to. 

“On the investor side, you need more females so that female founders feel comfortable asking for investment – because you do talk to each other differently, and there is nothing wrong with that,” says Sarah. “We’re all human beings. We’re all different. You have to have those different approaches and that’s why inclusivity is important.”

Another key factor is increasing the number and the visibility of women in leadership roles across the business landscape. Wider flexible working practices that enable easier parental responsibility for both partners will reduce barriers for women who want to have families and progress their careers.

The business case for diversity:

For any financier, the bottom line is what matters and Sarah’s approach is ultimately based on the business case for diversity. “A diverse team that demonstrates inclusivity is, in my eyes, going to be more resilient, have more perseverance and go further than a team that doesn’t have people pushing for it from different angles,” says Sarah.

“I remember seeing an all-female panel a few years ago, and they were talking about why we should consider promoting female founders and female investment and it was, ‘Well, because it’s the right thing to do…’ But why is it the right thing to do? Things like The Gender Index give you the data to show why it’s the right thing to do. It’s because – actually – it creates better results.”

Among venture capital funds, Jensen is ahead of the curve and this is down to how the company presents itself, who it talks to and the fact that it has been widening the range of people coming into its deal flow with the aim of investing solidly and achieving successful exits. Its first exit, in 2017, involved a mixed team, and the five subsequent exits all involved female- or mixed-led enterprises.

“It’s about widening out that pipeline, getting ideas and solutions from everybody, so that we’re solving the problems that affect everybody. It opens up the market and that’s why inclusivity is so important,” says Sarah. “We’re a very early stage fund, and that’s what we passionately believe in – that you’ve got to start at the grass roots. It will take time for these things to reach the later stage funds.”