Anu Duggal on the Future of Female Entrepreneurship

Newsweek

5 days ago

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Since starting Female Founders Fund in 2014, Anu Duggal has grown her firm on the premise that women-owned businesses are undervalued. So far, Duggal has proven that thesis correct and also refined her approach with a focus on health care, personal care and climate tech industries as well as vertical software.
"Looking historically at our portfolio and taking a look at where we have seen real ROI or where our value creation has been best has then led us to reflect on where we want to invest in the future," Duggal told Newsweek.
Since its founding, FFF has been investing in six to eight businesses per year and has boosted a number of successful companies, such as Maven, a virtual health care and benefits provider valued at $1.7 billion, Tala, a global financial services provider with annualized revenue of $300 million as of first quarter 2025, and Real, a mental health app for diverse communities. FFF returned its first fund in 2024.
Duggal also mentioned being an early investor in Dacora, a luxury electric car company founded by Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll, an MIT grad and former chief technology officer at Mirror, and other groundbreaking technology companies.
"It's really exciting to see women in these technical roles taking entrepreneurial risk," Duggal said.
Since the pandemic, lockdown and subsequent tightening of belts in the investment and venture capital worlds, Duggal mentioned that FFF has worked to be more principled in its approach.
"One of the biggest questions that we asked was, 'When you think about a business or business model or an industry, where and how active are the acquirers?'" she noted. "Moving forward, when you are looking at different categories, it's important to ask those questions and think about that upfront. I think that that has led to some of the categories that we look at now."
Women's Global Impact: Anu Duggal
Women's Global Impact: Anu Duggal
Newsweek Illustration
Duggan's journey as a founder was a zigzagging one: starting a consulting job in New York City the week of the September 11, 2001, attacks; moonlighting at Danny Meyer's Indian restaurant Tabla and having a job offer rescinded in the wake of the 2007 recession as she was graduating business school. She worked in startups in the United States and India and has always been a global citizen, having worked in Toronto, Paris and Shanghai and having grown up in Manila, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
In the broader venture capital and investment environment, cash flow has tightened, and less money is going to ideas on a napkin. While surveys have indicated that the pandemic and changing perceptions of corporate loyalty have made entrepreneurship more attractive to many different kinds of people, "it's still really hard," Duggal warns.
In terms of diversifying pathways into starting a business and gaining venture support, Duggal notes that she sees more women at VC firms and generally more people willing to be open-minded.
"You have more female partners at venture funds who are willing to think outside of the box and invest in opportunities—whether it's women's health, personal care, et cetera—where you didn't necessarily have that five or 10 years ago," she explained. "So I think that's been a really positive sign of progress."
While major schools and buzzy employers are always helpful for getting funded—think "PayPal mafia" or the ex-FAANG employees starting companies—Duggal points out that she's seen very successful companies started by people who were close to the problem their startup was solving.
As examples, she mentioned Krystle Mobayeni, who was working as a web designer for restaurants before recognizing their common set of needs and starting BentoBox, a company that would sell to Fiserv for over $300 million, and Billie, a shaving brand for women founded by Georgina Gooley, a former advertising executive who took on entrenched legacy brands in the shaving industry, which sold for $310 million in 2021. As a seed-stage investor, FFF helped those leaders reach their successful exits.
Duggal also pointed to founders who were strident enough to perform cold outreach in order to make something happen.
"Some of our exceptional founders were cold inbound. They wrote incredibly compelling emails, and they didn't just do that one time. They followed up multiple times," Duggal said. "When I look back on my own history of raising capital, we've had some success through warm introductions, but it's been a lot of cold outreach." She told Fortune that it took 700 meetings to raise $5.85 million to launch her firm at a time when "market dynamics were very strong."
Today, the nature of venture activity has changed, with decline from 2022 to 2024 and a slight revival lately, but Female Founders Fund has still proven that women-led businesses are undervalued and have tremendous potential for innovation in consumer markets. The firm has also worked with a lot of New York City–area founders and takes pride in representing that startup ecosystem.
"We've been very confident in our approach," Duggal said. "We don't need to invest in what everyone else is investing in. We're very comfortable ... not following what the herd is doing. We've seen success with that, and so we're very comfortable doubling down on that strategy."
Both Duggal and Dacora CEO D'Ambrosio-Cornell will join Newsweek at this year's inaugural Women's Global Impact forum. The August 5 event, hosted at Newsweek's headquarters in New York City, will bring together some of the world's top female executives and connect them with rising stars across industries and job functions.
For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the Women's Global Impact homepage.