Trish Costello is on a mission to harness the financial power of women. The 68-year-old entrepreneur founded Portfolia, a women-focused investment platform that fuels health care innovations aimed at improving women’s lives. Growing up in rural Kansas, Costello and her siblings were taught to reframe needs as opportunities.
“There isn’t a time I can remember when I didn’t believe that if I came up with a good idea, I could make it happen,” she said. Last year, $178 billion was invested in venture capital. However, the funding gap between male-led and female-led ventures has persisted for decades.
This imbalance motivated Costello to start Portfolia, one of the first venture firms in the U.S. to focus on women’s health. At the time, only six percent of decision makers at venture capital firms were women. Costello was part of a small team that founded the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership in Kansas City in 1994.
She launched and led a training program for leaders in venture capital for many years. The venture capitalists she knew, mostly men, wouldn’t consider backing companies focused on problems like infertility or hot flashes. But Costello recognized the market potential and was right.
Women-driven investing advances health sector
From 2018 to 2023, investment in companies supporting women’s health, many of them women-led, significantly increased. Portfolia has 14 funds that invest in companies with a largely female target market in categories ranging from active aging to longevity to femtech.
90 percent of its investors are women. The firm has made 185 investments valued at more than $65 million in 118 companies. Nearly 70 percent of those are women-led ventures.
“I have always been interested in money as fuel for innovation,” Costello stated. “Startup investing is about being able to identify the most promising opportunities and get the fuel in at the right time.
When Costello left Kauffman Fellows, she felt they had made a real shift to more women in venture capital investing. She had been doing some angel investing on her own and saw the market for women’s health emerging.
“It felt like no one else was seeing the opportunity,” she said. Costello recalls presenting two deals to V.C.s, companies focused on menopause. “One guy said, ‘There’s no way my partners are going to do a menopause deal.’ Back then, talking about anything related to women’s health wasn’t done.
But I saw a lot of potential in these markets where women were the key customers, influencers, and entrepreneurs.”
Photo by; Tim Gouw on Unsplash
