We at DSW Ventures are committed to ensuring that our team contains a rich diversity of individuals, enabling our investors, our portfolio companies and
our team to benefit from the broadest possible range of viewpoints, experience and ideas.
Our investment team is small but growing – a key focus for us as we develop and build our team will be the diversity and balance of our team.
Our investment team is currently 50% female and 50% male, with ages in 20s, 40s and 50s. We are all proud North-Westerners!
DSW Ventures is a signatory of HM Treasury’s Investing in Women Code, a commitment by financial services firms to improving female entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and finance.
As part of this commitment, we have adopted the following internal practices:
- We will continue to collect data relating to the gender of applicant founder teams
- We will perform periodic reviews of our applicant data to identify any possible unconscious bias and consider mitigating actions
- We will assess whether there is additional support we can provide when reviewing propositions from under-represented founders
- We will continue to work with forums and industry bodies looking to promote female founders and their businesses
- We will actively seek out female-founded businesses when approaching prospects directly