Kate Morris’ goal is to make 10 other women ‘really wealthy’

afr.com:

Adore Beauty co-founder Kate Morris has a personal goal to back 10 female founders to make them “really wealthy”. She says that is one way to ensure more investment finds it way to women-led businesses.

But that is just the start: Ms Morris says the way to get serious about addressing under-investment in female fund managers and founders is the $3.5 trillion superannuation industry.

Adore Beauty founder Kate Morris says super funds can move capital at scale to fix underinvestment in female founders. Darrian Traynor

“The biggest – by far – pot of capital is your super… that is billions being invested on your behalf… in private equity’s case 94 per cent is controlled by men,” Ms Morris, who also runs venture fund Glow Capital, said.

“It’s your money, you should call them up and ask them what they’re doing about it. Because they are not doing anything about it.”

Ms Morris was speaking at the Sydney launch of Beyond the Billion, a US-based program that encourages investors to pledge to invest in female-led start-ups.

So far, six Australian funds, including Aliavia, Antler, Artesian, Blackbird, GiantLeap and Vulpes have joined the pledge, started by Sarah Chen-Spellings and Shelly Porges.

Locally, the pledge will be led by Carol Schwartz, a long-time campaigner for more women in business, in addition to her roles on the Reserve Bank board and at the Trawalla Group.

Carol Schwartz. Simon Schluter

“Australia is well behind even the very low global percentages of VC funding going to women-founded companies” Ms Schwartz said.

“Globally this number is 2 per cent and in Australia it is 0.7 per cent. We can ask ourselves why and when we look at the composition of private equity and venture capital firms, and the lack of females in