IWD2025: The WBS alum tackling the gender gap in venture capital funding

If ever there was a moment for women with brilliant ideas to stand up and speak up, it is now.

This is the view of Warwick Business School alum, Jessica Rasmussen, CEO of venture capital firm Two Magnolias, which aims to give a stronger voice to female and ethnically diverse founders of start-ups.

“I really think we are at the dawn of a new age,” said Jessica in the run-up to International Women’s Day. “It is not only artificial intelligence that is changing things in the fourth industrial revolution, which is this period of rapid technological advancement of the physical, digital, and biological worlds we are currently in. It is also a moment when sustainability and human health are coming fully into play.

“Regenerative energy, new technologies, treatments to advance human health and longevity, plastics replacements, waste management – the business opportunities going forward are only getting broader and wider.

“For women who are ready to take responsibility for these issues, who are ready to make an impact in something they are passionate about, this is the moment when they actually can. And that goes for women of any creed, colour or sexual orientation.”

It wasn’t always the case. When Jessica first entered the banking profession after graduating from WBS with a BSc Management Science (now BSc Management) it was very much a man’s world.

“In those days, Royal Bank of Scotland had a huge foreign exchange trading floor in Broadgate, London, and it was very male-dominated,” she said. “There were very few women, and I was certainly the first Asian woman on the trading floor.”

Slowly, though, she rose up the ranks, becoming a global markets expert, advising the world’s largest macro fund managers across fixed income products. Afterwards, she spent 10 years at the Bank of America in London as a Managing Director.

“When I left the City trading rooms in 2019, there were probably more female analysts coming through than male, and there was far greater ethnic diversity too,” Jessica noted. “There was a much greater sense of belonging.”

Impact-led business: a new path for a management degree holder

By that time, though, she was ready to embark on a new adventure. “I’d done my 30 years in banking, and I was thinking: now what?”

The answer came in the huge investment opportunities she saw in the new breed of impact-led businesses emerging in the UK.

She was in for a shock, however, as she started doing her research with the co-founder of Two Magnolias, Marie Korde. The two former banking colleagues soon discovered that less than two per cent of capital from UK venture capital funds was going to female founders, and less than one per cent to ethnically diverse founders.

“We were astonished,” Jessica said. “It was like stepping back in time in terms of representation.

“And then we looked at it from the venture capital perspective and found that 93 per cent of venture capital partners are from just one demographic – white, male – and we were convinced then that there was a gap in the market.

“It was like, OK, you guys go and play over in your sand pit, and we’ll play over in this other sand pit where all sorts of diverse activities are going on.”

It was a risky move, in the riskiest, highest, octane part of financial services, but Jessica was soon putting a venture capital fund together that closed its first funding round in 2022.

“We invested in a portfolio of 12 companies with 50 per cent of them having a female founder, and 41 per cent having an ethnically diverse founder.”

An example of those is Movetru, started by Naomi McGregor in Northern Ireland after a bad knee injury ended her dreams of becoming a ballerina.

Using machine learning and algorithms in movement tracking to reduce injuries for elite athletes, Movetru is just the sort of company that Two Magnolias wants to support.

Why now is the right time to invest in impact ventures

“These are high-risk new ventures but this is precisely the right time to invest in companies that are trying to solve pressing challenges in human health and sustainability,” said Jessica, who is certified in Climate Change and Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

“Really, we are investing in growth areas for the consumers of tomorrow. What is happening right now is a massive generational shift to Generation Z, and for them issues such as health and sustainability are absolutely part and parcel of life.”

A report by market analysts NielsenIQ and GfK in collaboration with non-profit World Data Lab found Generation Z will have a spending power of $12 trillion by 2030 and will account for a quarter of the global population.

In the meantime, Jessica and Marie are putting the finishing touches on a second venture capital fund, which Two Magnolias will launch later this year, despite all the current negativity about the UK economy.

“This is exactly the right time to invest when sentiment is fairly negative and investments are affordable, and yet, at the same time, so many exciting things are happening at the grassroots level of business,” Jessica said.

“These are the opportunities that women can be totally involved in, so long as they are brave, confident and smart.

“In the past, women have not been the big risk takers, but I say the only restrictions are the ones you set for yourself. 

“When you chase your ambition you only have upside. The downside you face is that you do nothing at all and watch the greatest changes to humanity happen around you.”

Further reading:

Why are ambitious female founders penalised by investors?

Why is there a gender gap in entrepreneurship?

Why female entrepreneurs need different training

Discover more about the School’s Change Makers.