We resonate with the underdog who rises up to meet the challenge. Because we’ve been there ourselves.

Did you know that less than 2% of venture funding goes to women-led companies? Despite these long odds, Jennifer, an Internet pioneer succeeded in raising $30 million for her first company, BioSpace.com, which she launched on March 15, 1995.

Tim had his own journey from milking cows twice a day on his family’s farm in Wisconsin to working for some of the biggest names in technology — Apple, Cray Research, and Sun Microsystems— before joining Jen as co-ceo of BioSpace.

While BioSpace is gratefully still alive and well today almost 30 years later, it wasn’t the financial win that we hoped or deserved after 20 person years of effort. And after getting to profitability. And after hiring over 100 extraordinary people who shared our passion to create the life sciences’ leading portal designed to help leaders in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry find the cure for cancer or Alzheimers Disease or Diabetes (which both of their children have had since they were four).

Fortunately, we took that hard-won knowledge and were invited to make a small investment at the bridge loan level in a nascent Chinese search engine named Baidu.

Frankly, we were lucky. Lucky to have a small amount of money to invest in the right time with the right entrepreneurs. Lucky to be from supportive families who valued education. Lucky to know the right people. Lucky to have the right experience. In sum, we were lucky to have access to what we now call “vital forms of capital.”

So now, it is time for us to pay it forward by working with founders & entrepreneurs, especially those from marginalized communities, to catalyze their access to vital forms of capital.

This is why we do what we do!