Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King by Anupreeta Das

Author:Anupreeta Das
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

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French Gates, with an estimated net worth of $11 billion, wants to make money off American society’s sidelined goals. At Pivotal Ventures, the investment and advocacy firm she founded in 2015, social good is not the only return she seeks for her dollars. Rather, the firm sees an opportunity to bet on start-ups working on issues that are almost entirely overlooked by the traditional venture capital business. Among the companies in Pivotal’s portfolio are Tia, which offers birth control and sexual health advice; Penny Finance, which is building tools to offer women financial education; and Candoo, which essentially offers tech support for older adults, helping them learn how to use new software and devices such as iPhones and Amazon’s Alexa.

These are small investments of no more than a few million dollars. Made mostly within the past few years, they are tentative steps by Pivotal to see if it can make venture capital–style returns while sticking with its broader mission to pursue gender equality and women’s empowerment in the United States. The firm has also invested in some higher-profile private companies, including Ellevest, the personal finance site geared toward women that was founded by former Wall Street banker Sallie Krawcheck; and All Raise, which is dedicated to women in tech. A consultant who studied Pivotal’s investment strategy said the firm, despite having virtually no track record, expects to have greater credibility and better investment opportunities come its way by promoting French Gates’s name and close involvement to company founders. “Melinda’s name being attached to it carries a cachet,” the consultant said.26

Nestled in a Seattle suburb, Pivotal operates out of an airy office suffused with light, plush in the way modern workplaces are, with a lot of “collaborative” spaces, wood and fabric touches, and a swanky kitchen. The firm is structured as a limited liability company rather than a traditional charitable foundation. Where the latter are bound by laws on how much they need to give away annually to maintain their tax-free status, and cannot fund political campaigns or lobby, limited liability companies pay taxes, but have the flexibility to embrace multiple strategies to promote a founder’s goals, whether through venture investing, political contributions, advocacy, or charitable giving. Pivotal can thus invest in companies, make grants, or support advocacy, or do all three, in pursuit of its goal to increase women’s political power, and as of 2024 it had invested in 150 such groups. It even has a publishing arm called Moment of Lift books, an imprint of Macmillan’s Flatiron Books, which was launched in 2021 to publish nonfiction that promotes equality for girls. Through the LLC structure, which has become increasingly popular with philanthropists, Pivotal has sought to be more experimental and innovative, while bringing the same analysis and rigor to projects as the Gates Foundation does, according to an outside consultant who has worked with the firm. Pivotal’s main goals are getting more women into technology jobs and elected to public office, supporting women and girls of color, and advocating for paid family and medical leave and caregiving.

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