Women founded venture funding drops to 1.9%

In 2023 we have sloped back to alarming rates of venture funding for women founded companies

Quick Look

• Words of Wisdom

• What’s next?

• The Moonshots podcast is coming …

• Women-founded venture funding drops to 1.9%

• Create your own AI Animated Avatar

• New Music

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Words of Wisdom

"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." - Rosalynn Carter

Leadership can take many forms but you can usually spot a leader because they inspire others, make difficult decisions, communicate effectively, have a strong presence, lead by example, drive results, and empower those around them.

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What’s Next?

In my last post, I mentioned that I’m a free agent and looking for and figuring out what’s next. My research on this front was a bit upended by getting COVID 2 weeks ago after somehow dodging it for the past 3 years.

I’m back in action for the most part and taking meetings and having amazing cath-up conversations with my incredible community and network and would love to hear from you especially if you can think of some great ideas around my goals:

Become an EIR at a startup studio/ accelerator/ fund and figure out what’s next while I continue to add value by mentoring other founders, and learning more about the venture side of the business and industry.

Venture Partner or Venture Fellow (or Associate/ Apprentice) to learn more about the Venture Funding side and actively begin to learn more about investing in startups. I learn best in practice and I’m looking for virtual and remote opportunities to learn through osmosis.

Startup - If I meet the right founders and team I would definitely jump at the opportunity to build again. I’m experienced in SaaS (B2B and B2C), and also interested in climate tech, health tech, and mostly AI and the future of work.

Fractional CMO/ Head of Marketing/ Growth & Product - a lot of people need help when launching and building a new startup or company and I can contribute to that gap and help you create that playbook and hire the right team.

If you can think of someone I should meet, or something I should know about, please don’t hesitate to reply and get in touch.

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A new podcast is [still] coming…

The Moonshots with Lizelle podcast is delayed because my mic broke and then I got COVID for the first time 2 weeks ago and I’m trying to shake off this “I sound like an old man who’s been smoking for 30 years” sound. Life doesn’t care about our plans, does it? You simply roll with the punches and do your best.

I will keep you updated on the podcast launch and episodes right here in my newsletter. You will be the first to listen to the teaser and see the interview guest list.

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Women-founded venture funding drops to 1.9%

We didn’t think it could get any worse, and then it did. The data is in for 2022 and venture funding for women-founded startups plummeted.

Captain Marvel reading the 1.9% news. I created this with AI + Photoshop.

Yes, it’s disheartening and alarming and quite disgusting, really, and I say that in the same breath that women continue to arm up with creative ways to raise capital, and astonishingly account for 50% of all funds raised with RegCF (community rounds) where founders raise capital from their customers, fans and unaccredited angels.

The good news is deal count is actually slightly up from 2019.

But we are raising less money!

Here’s my entire Twitter thread on this latest data from Pitchbook.

Lizelle van Vuuren @heylizelle

"Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all VC funds in 2022"

Sources of this data from Pitchbook and Techcrunch

It might be time for Women Who Startup 2.0. Who wants to start a venture fund with me and cut more women founders checks?

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Create your own AI Animated Avatar

I’m, as always, tinkering with new tech and nothing is more fun than AI at the moment. Today, in about 15 minutes or less, I created an animated avatar of myself, wrote a script with ChatGPT, had AI convert that script into an audio file, and stitched it all together to create an animated video.

Here’s what I created

Here are all the steps I took to create this AI Animated Avatar

1) I grabbed one of the very first AI avatars of myself that I created with profilepicture.ai But you can create an avatar of any character with midjourney.com for free (sign up for a trial).

2) With ChatGPT I created a "script for a youtube video"

3) Then I took that script to ElevenLabs elevenlabs.io and turned it into a voice recording and audio file (.MP3) I chose one of their voiceovers (Rachel) at first and I also recorded my own voice (I still sound pretty sick from COVID so the voice is a little funny!) with QuickTime and uploaded that (this is a paid feature).

4) For the final step I brought the image and the audio file into D-ID d-id.com and generated the video from my avatar + "Upload Voice Audio" and boom, it generated this video.

I learned how to do this from this YouTube channel, called Prompt Engineering. It’s a great resource to start learning several key things to create in AI.

Here is my entire Twitter thread where I break this tutorial down as well in the event that you’re on Twitter and want to engage that way.

Lizelle van Vuuren @heylizelle

This entire video, script, and avatar of me, were all created with AI. Turn your volume up and watch. Here's how I created this:

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What are you working on?

Leave a comment and let’s get into it. I’m always building community and would love to know how we can help each other connect and grow. Magic happens when you’re connected to opportunity.

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New Music

There’s one universal language I know we all speak and it’s music.

I just heard this song for the first time, one of those accidental listens on Spotify and it’s fantastic. Meet Amythyst Kiah and tune into Black Myself (2021). Lots of soul, blues, and rock in this bop. There’s a lot of heart here, can’t wait to see how she continues to create powerful music.

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Thanks for reading.

As always — Keep Climbing.

Until next time,

Lizelle

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