Access to the project Funding for women is poor around the world, but it is particularly worrying in Australia, where less than 1% of all private sector funding in the country went to businesses founded and led exclusively by women in 2022. Further down, only 3% of venture capital funding went to groups founded exclusively by women and 10% to groups with at least one female founder .
A downward trend is evident. In 2021 and 2020, 21% and 25%, respectively, of VC funding in Australia went to startups with at least one female founder.
For women of color, that number is even worse. A report commissioned by consultancy Creative Co-Operative found that in 2021, despite record growth in VC funding in Australia—about $10 billion— just 0.03% went to Bla(c)k women and women of color founders. (In Australia, “Bla(c)k” stands for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, African Australians, Pacific Islanders, etc.)
Tracey Warren (pictured top center), CEO of F5 Collective, an Australian VC firm and advocacy group backed by a US family fund, said she worries women will see these statistics and wonder: “What is that the point? I can’t find funding anyway. I’ll just give up.”
That’s why Warren and the F5 Collective sponsored a bill in California that would require VCs to report on the diversity of the founders they back, including race, disability status, gender and LGBTQ+ status. SB 54, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in Octoberenters into force on 1 March 2025.
“Anything that happens in Silicon Valley has a ripple effect around the world,” Warren told TechCrunch+. “We needed a precedent, to create a framework to take it to the rest of the world.”
F5 has already invested in eight Asia Pacific startups (and is aiming for 12) using the $5 million proof of concept fund, which came from the family office of Kelly Kimball, co-founder and executive chairman of Vitu and chairman of F5. The VC aims to raise another $100 million for Fund 2 in the spring of 2024. This money will be used to further finance its current portfolio companies and help F5 achieve its goal of investing in 1,000 female founders in APAC by 2030.
F5’s investment mandate is broad. VC will invest in technology that shapes our future and technology with social and environmental impact. Founding teams can be mixed, but a female founder must be in a position of real leadership.
“None of this gives a woman 2% equity and gives her a founder title,” Warren said.
Beyond giving money to women, Warren and F5 want to create generational change for one billion women across India, Southeast Asia and Australia. The fund is just one piece of a five-pillar strategy that includes mentoring women as angel investors, working with companies to facilitate pilots and use cases for women-led startups, and advocating for policy change.
That’s where California SB 54 came in. “What is reported and measured is changing,” Warren said. “If we don’t start reporting, we have nothing to start with.”
It advocates political change
Politics is the second pillar of F5. Enacting policy change can be more difficult in Australia than in the US, in part because the lobby is not as strong, Warren said. He also said that passing a bill like SB 54 in Australia would be difficult, to say the least, and would take much longer than the three months it took to pass the bill in California.
