Trish Costello is Harnessing the Financial Power of Women

This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who are charting new pathways and fighting for opportunities for women and others.

Last year, $178 billion in venture capital was invested in U.S. companies, but only 19 percent of those investment decisions were made by women, according to the capital markets database Pitchbook.

Just two percent of that funding went to companies founded by women. This imbalance — which has persisted for decades — is what motivated Trish Costello to start Portfolia in 2014, a venture capital investment platform geared toward women and one of the first venture firms in the U.S. to focus on women’s health. That year, only six percent of decision makers at venture capital firms were women.

Ms. Costello was part of a small team that founded the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City in 1994, and she launched and led Kauffman Fellows, a training program for leaders in venture capital, for many years. The venture capitalists she knew — mostly men — wouldn’t even consider backing companies focused on problems like infertility or hot flashes. But Ms. Costello recognized the market potential and was right; from 2018 to 2023, investment in companies that support women’s health (many women-led) increased 314 percent in the U.S. and Europe.

Ms. Costello said 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.

Ms. Costello, 68, has been an entrepreneur since she was a child growing up in rural Kansas. She and her three siblings were taught early that when faced with a need, they should reframe it as an opportunity. “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 in a video interview. The conversation was edited and condensed.

How did you come to be focused on startup investment and especially in women’s health companies?

I have always been interested in money as fuel for innovation. Startup investing is about being able to identify the most promising opportunities and get the fuel in at the right time. When I left Kauffman Fellows, I felt like we had made a real shift to more women in venture capital investing. I had been doing some angel investing on my own and saw the market for women’s health emerging, and it felt like no one else was seeing the opportunity. I remember I took 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.