"We have the pipeline. It is underpriced, it is overperforming. Why would we not make a financial bet on this?"
Women-founded startups continue to receive only a small fraction of global venture capital, despite evidence that many build more capital-efficient businesses and generate more revenue per dollar invested. Aurora spent five years addressing that gap through visibility, identifying and evaluating women-led technology companies in emerging markets, then connecting the strongest founders with investors.
In 2026, that work expanded into direct investment. Backed initially by inDrive, Aurora Ventures is investing at pre-seed and seed across MENA, Africa, and Latin America, with checks of up to $250,000. The strategy draws on the pipeline built through the Aurora Tech Award, whose latest cycle attracted more than 3,400 applications from 127 countries.
Startup Researcher spoke with Bella Ghassemi-Smith, Head of Aurora Ventures, about why many of those founders remain invisible, how Aurora can establish credibility as a first institutional investor, and why emerging-market exit realities require a different venture playbook.
You began your career in law, then moved through marketing and growth into venture capital. How did that path lead to Aurora, and what do you bring to the investment process?
I entered London's startup ecosystem almost by accident after pivoting away from law. I started in marketing and growth, then moved to Wayra, the corporate venture capital initiative backed by Telefonica, where I learned the other side of the table.
I became frustrated by how closed the ecosystem could feel. The same profiles kept appearing, everyone seemed to know everyone else, and referrals could sometimes carry more weight than proper due diligence. I wanted a role combining people, purpose, and profit. Then Aurora found me, first to build what became one of the largest award platforms for women founders in emerging markets and now to build an investment platform.
My strength is understanding how to make people believe in an exceptional asset. I sit on the investment committee and have evaluated many companies, but I am not going to pretend that I am the strongest person in the room at assessing every aspect of a company's financial health. My role is to attract strong founders, build the brand, and make clear to investors and partners that this is not simply "about women." It is a significant financial opportunity.
Aurora spent five years operating as an award. Why did direct investment become the next step?
Aurora began with a simple problem statement. Women-founded startups were receiving roughly 2% of venture funding, and that figure had barely moved despite the enormous amount of capital flowing into the asset class. The initial idea was that if we found and platformed the strongest women founders in emerging markets, funding would follow.
The award grew from 116 applications across nine countries to more than 3,400 applications from 127 countries in its latest cycle. As that pipeline expanded, we found limited overlap with investment databases. Investors also started asking for greater access to the companies behind the lists we released.
Then there was the financial case. BCG research has found that women-founded and co-founded startups generate more than twice as much revenue per dollar invested as male-founded startups. Emerging markets can also offer valuation arbitrage. The same underlying company may be priced very differently depending on whether it is based in the United States or in a market such as Morocco.
We had a differentiated pipeline. It was underpriced, and the evidence suggested it was overperforming. Why would we not make a financial bet on it?
I told inDrive's CEO that if the goal was to back the boldest women founders in emerging markets, the next step was to become their pre-seed or seed investor, ideally their first institutional check. We want an Aurora investment to become a credibility signal that opens doors for a founder.
Why are mainstream databases and investor networks missing so many of the founders Aurora sees?
Databases are largely built around visible financing events. If women are not receiving pre-seed or seed checks, they are less likely to appear in those datasets. That does not mean they are not building interesting businesses. In many cases, the lack of external capital has forced them to build capital-efficient companies around user growth and revenue, but cash flow constrains their ability to scale.
The cost of building has also fallen. Tools such as Claude Code and Lovable have lowered the barrier to creating and testing products, so the absence of institutional funding is an even weaker proxy for whether a company is worth examining.
The other issue is the closed-network effect. Venture capital remains highly relationship-driven in many emerging markets. If founders are not in the right phone books or referral circles, they do not get through the door.
Aurora reaches them because we are social-first. Most of our pipeline comes through inbound applications or direct outreach, particularly on LinkedIn. We receive far fewer referrals from VCs, partly because many do not have enough women founders in their own networks to refer. The reason these companies are poorly covered by data platforms is closely connected to the reason investors are not seeing them.
If Aurora wants to be the first institutional check, does it need to lead rounds, and how will it establish credibility with other investors?
If we only follow other investors, we risk reproducing the selection patterns that already exist in venture capital. We would still rely on the incumbent market to decide which founders are valuable, then choose from those deals. Those are often not the companies our thesis is designed to find.
We are happy to participate when another VC backs a company we strongly believe in. But we have also found that we sometimes need to act first or the investment will not happen. One option is to invest through a convertible loan note before a full round has been assembled, with the expectation that our participation helps unlock the remainder. Another is to bring the round together ourselves.
Aurora may not be the formal lead if another investor writes the biggest check, but we can still orchestrate the round. I want a trusted network of investors across our regions who understand the thesis and trust our due diligence. When we tell them that a company is worth examining, I want them to take that seriously.
Credibility will ultimately come from the performance of the companies, the quality of our selection and due diligence, our people, and the Aurora brand. If the underlying assets are strong, our role is to remove the bias that might previously have stopped investors from looking at them. At this stage, that is a hypothesis we still need to prove.
Why has Aurora prioritized MENA, Africa, and Latin America, and how do you avoid overconcentrating the portfolio where the pipeline currently converts best?
The simple answer is traction. These are the regions where we have built substantial founder reach over the past five years, and they already give us a large geographic remit. Most companies in our database still come from the Middle East and Africa, while our Latin American pipeline has grown significantly over the past two years.
In the 2026 award cycle, roughly 70% of the initial application volume came from MENA, but its share declined through each evaluation stage. Latin America produced fewer applications, yet a higher proportion progressed, and eight of the ten finalists came from the region. That reflected the independent evaluation process, not a geographic preference.
The result also shows why I find the label "emerging markets" frustrating. It groups most of the world into one category without recognizing that countries and regions are at very different stages of development and face different constraints.
The award and the investment platform work differently. We would not override independent award results to create geographic balance. In investing, however, we can scout more deliberately. The answer is not to impose quotas or lower the bar. It is to ask why we are not seeing the best founders in markets such as Nigeria or Pakistan, then improve our sourcing until we do. We expect to expand activity in Asia and the CIS region over time, but first we need to prove the model in our core markets.
How involved is inDrive today, and what might Aurora's future LP base look like?
Aurora's operating costs and initial investment capital come directly from inDrive, so it is effectively our sole LP for the pilot phase. We work closely with its New Ventures and M&A team, which supports financial due diligence. inDrive's footprint across 48 countries also gives us access, where useful, to people with practical experience of markets such as Pakistan and Morocco.
The investment committee includes Aurora, members of inDrive's New Ventures team, and senior inDrive leadership. Arsen Tomsky, inDrive's founder and CEO, is actively involved in shaping the vision and in investment decisions. For now, we are operating around a shared thesis.
The pilot is intended to let us make several investments, demonstrate the pipeline's quality, and then raise a fund properly. There is no guarantee that inDrive would be an LP in a future independent vehicle.
Initially, family offices, foundations, high-net-worth individuals, and people who have built wealth in the corporate world may be the best fit. They still want financial performance, but many also want their capital to have a positive effect. Traditional institutional LPs have fiduciary constraints and strong track-record requirements. Aurora is an emerging manager, so we first have to prove the thesis.
Why remain focused on emerging markets when Europe and North America offer deeper capital pools?
We are trying to fill the largest gaps. Women founders remain underfunded in developed markets, but more investors and initiatives are already addressing the problem there. In many emerging ecosystems, there is still no dedicated investor focused exclusively on women founders because it is considered such a difficult thesis.
Our strategy also reflects the liquidity routes that actually exist. In Latin America, for example, local IPO pathways are limited, and only a small number of venture-backed companies will reach US public markets. Many realistic outcomes therefore come through local or regional acquisitions.
That changes what investors should build toward. A company that reaches US$10 million to US$20 million in annual recurring revenue, performs strongly, and remains affordable to a regional buyer can be a very attractive outcome. If too much capital enters too early at an aggressive valuation, the company may become too expensive for local acquirers without being ready for a US listing.
Capital is finite in emerging markets, so businesses often need to be more efficient and reach profitability earlier. If one of our companies eventually lists on Nasdaq, that would be fantastic, but it is not the assumption on which every investment is based.
What would success look like over the next two to three years, and over five to seven?
Two years is too early to judge a venture strategy conclusively, but we should be able to see whether the first investments are progressing as expected. We will look at growth, financial performance, the path toward an exit, and how the results compare with other investments we could have made.
We also want founders to attract larger, more established investors. If the market starts to say, "Aurora has invested, so this company is worth examining," that would show people trust our selection and due diligence.
Over five to seven years, I would want exits that generate a strong TVPI for what would hopefully be a formal fund. I would want Aurora to have raised meaningful capital and established itself as the go-to first institutional check for women founders in emerging markets.
The ambition is to create a signal similar to the one Y Combinator has built. I want someone to hear, "That is an Aurora founder," and for it to mean something because the founders we backed have performed. We believe the opportunity is compelling, but the model still needs to be proven.
How many investments do you expect to make in 2026, what will the checks look like, and when might a standalone fund reach first close?
We entered the year hoping to make six investments, but based on the current pace, I think we will complete two or three. We do not want to invest simply to meet a target. I would rather make fewer high-conviction investments and carry a strong pipeline into 2027.
The check size is a range. One company might receive $50,000, another $100,000, and another $250,000. We are still determining whether the best model is more investments with smaller checks or fewer investments with larger checks.
Fundraising timelines almost always extend, so I want to present this as an aspiration, not a commitment. I would like to reach a first close by the end of 2027, ideally at around $10 million. The broader ambition would be to raise continuously over the following three to four years and eventually build a vehicle in the $30 million to $50 million range. Those figures remain highly provisional and will depend on our initial performance, Aurora's development, and how long inDrive is prepared to fund the inaugural phase.
The Aurora Tech Award will continue regardless. It is the platform's foundation and will keep identifying and spotlighting women founders. Aurora alone cannot close the financing gap, so we still need to redirect capital already in the market toward the founders it is missing.
What should venture capitalists change when evaluating women founders, and what should women founders change when pitching investors?
We have worked with EWA Capital, which has a strong share of women entrepreneurs in its portfolio. When its team compared founders' forecasts with what they ultimately delivered, the women's projections tended to be accurate, while forecasts from male-led teams were more likely to be inflated.
Women founders often sell investors what they have and what they are confident they can deliver. Their deck may look less dramatic than one promising four times the numbers for a similar business, but the forecast may be more reliable. VCs should not automatically interpret conservative projections as a lack of ambition. They should ask whether the founder is simply presenting the evidence honestly.
There are two layers of bias. The first concerns who the founder is, which can close the door before the deck is seriously examined. The second concerns what she is building. Investors may question whether a market is legitimate or large enough, particularly when a product addresses needs they do not personally understand.
My advice to women founders is the mirror image. Do not lie, but do not put yourself at an unnecessary disadvantage. Venture capital rewards a compelling account of the upside. Believe in what you are building, use the traction you have earned, and show investors what the company can become rather than only what it is today.
Do not self-select out. Send the deck, make the connection, and start the conversation.