Citrine Angels and Okeanos Ventures Management Join Forces to Fund More Female Founders Nationwide

Today, we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with Okeanos. Centered around a joint vision of supporting more female-founded startups and making venture and angel investing more accessible, Citrine and Okeanos will join forces to fund more women entrepreneurs and expand investment opportunities for women nationwide. 

Okeanos, formerly Riverbend Capital, is a venture capital firm consisting of 100+ members nationwide that invests in early and growth stage technology company. They are committed to increasing its focus on female and underrepresented founders, including those from BIPOC communities. In the past two years, they’ve had a surge of funding for female founders, including significant investments in portfolio companies like Veda Data, Alethea, AttuneIoT (formerly SenseWare) and more. 

Founded in 2019, Citrine’s mission is to increase the number of female investors funding female-founded businesses. We currently have 80 accomplished female executive members, with one-third of those members identifying as BIPOC, including nearly half of the Board. Through the organization, our members have invested over $1.4 million in more than 20 female-founded startups over the past five years, including Healium, Madison Reed and Mosie Baby.

Diversity is a key pillar for Okeanos. 10% of their members are female, and they are committed to increasing this percentage, even as their overall number rapidly increases. 

Unfortunately, 10% is a pretty common percentage across the world of VC, tech and Fortune 500 businesses:

• Fortune recently published its annual Fortune 500 report, showing 52 (or 10.4%) out of the Fortune 500 companies are led by women 
• Women make up 11% of investing partners (GP-level) at VC firms
• U.S. startups founded solely by women received only 2.1% of VC funding, according to Pitchbook (if we look at startups with at least one female co-founder, the number improves to 23% in 2023, up from 18% in 2022); more concerningly, only .5% of venture funding in the U.S. went to Black-founded startups in 2023

This gender gap in VC matters – a lot – because of the role investors play in choosing which products, services, innovations, and ideas will shape the way we all work, play, and live. The inventions and companies receiving funding and support are the ones that will drive our economy and influence our society. Likewise, the leaders at the top blue-chip companies influence the global financial market, our culture, and the next generation of managers. It’s also been shown time and again that female VCs and investors outperform men when it comes to investment decisions and that female-founded startups have a higher trajectory for success. 

So what does this new Okeanos and Citrine partnership mean? It means we will be hosting joint pitch dinners with all female-founder lineups, collaborating on educational and networking sessions for female investors, and ultimately funding and supporting many more women entrepreneurs. The collective networks within the Okeanos and Citrine groups will offer expanded resources and expertise to help nurture and grow these ventures so they can continue to foster positive change in this world. When we share collective experiences, knowledge, and insights across talented groups of people, we have the potential to make powerful and far-reaching change.

We are thrilled Okeanos joins us and is committed to diversifying their member base and the founders they fund. We look forward to working together to close the gender gap and move the needle much higher than 10% across the board when it comes to female-founded VC-backed startups and women investors.