Ryan Else
Investing in female founders | Teaching women about money
Maximize money, effort, and time – Nicole Denholder
“Focus so that you’re maximizing effort money, and time to get the quickest result”
ABOUT
Founder of Next Chapter Ventures (NCV), where we are redefining partnerships for Female Entrepreneurs, Investors and Partners. NCV has launched Next Chapter Crowdfunding platform – a rewards based crowdfunding platform; followed by Next Chapter Raise – a platform which provides courses and coaching that connects female founders with the investor community and financial institutions. We take the fear out of fundraising and help you grow your business faster.
Co-founder of Sophia, a financial education platform for women to address the gender wealth and investing gap. Sophia not only teaches women how to gain control of their personal finances but also addresses the gender wealth gap and the gender investing gap. In turn, directing capital towards women-led start ups.
THE FULL INTERVIEW
Nicole Denholder
The full #OPNAskAnAngel talk
Nicole: Hi thanks so much for having me I’m excited to be on um looking forward to chatting with you.
Jeffery: Now likewise I’m I’m pretty excited because I know we’ve chatted a few times and we’ve gone into many different tangents so there’s some really uh some really good things that we’re going to dive in today and I think today too is going to be exciting because we’re taking a different approach um when we’re going to uh to this interview today is because we want to look at something a little bit different and also kind of alter the way we were kind of attacking the market with our with our podcast so I’m pretty excited about the little changes that we’re making and uh glad that it’s going to be with yourself today so to kick things off let’s jump into uh everything about you you can jump in and share a little bit about kind of your background where you came from from the Canterbury times all the way through PWC to Sophia um even on the schooling side and then the last thing is one thing about you that nobody would know.
Nicole: Um so fantastic okay well I’m an Australian living in Hong Kong um I’ve been here 20 years and prior to that I was in Europe for six or seven years it all sounds quite scary is that as it adds up um and so I grew up in Brisbane Queensland went to Queensland University of Technology I did an international business degree um I think my dad or my parents know this but I mean the main reason I did that degree was only because it had International in front of it because all I ever wanted to do was travel um and you know when I was young um you know 11 12 year old people would say you know my you know what do you want to be when you’re older and I’d be like I want to be an expatriate that was it I just wanted to travel I think the bug was in me from my parents um and interestingly um it kind of really drove my decisions around University your sum it really drove all my first actions in terms of working as well because I I you know I started working I finished my business degree which I enjoyed I got to spend six months on a government scholarship in Indonesia um as part of that to Commonwealth government scholarship which was fantastic um so I got kind of some of that International exposure early on and I really appreciated that and actually met kind of two of my best friends through that experience that I’m still really close with to today and then I yeah I left I left um university and as you mentioned I went to Canterbury and that was um that was really a good experience but really what I was trying to do was kind of save up money so I could head overseas so pretty much I was only there a year because um I bought a one-way ticket to London you know I was the um kind of the typical Australian maybe who then heads across to Europe to kind of explore the world however it was during the October 1997 crash so the Australian dollar tanked so I went to a third of what I thought I would have um so that certainly dictated what I did um yeah so so I you know following that I was always interested in and I was always interested in working I I really did look forward to kind of getting out and getting a job um and you know you know always happy the the busier I am the happier I am I definitely thrive on that and I traveled extensively and then I was very fortunate when I um after traveling moved to London that I was working at um Prudential UK in London and at that time pricewater housecoopers was doing a a project with them and it just happenedto be that I was working on the Contracting team that was working with pricewater housecoopers and at that point they were forming um you know a lot around their you know they’d formed their Global Capital markets group just kind of a couple years prior to that and then they were building that up and so I had the opportunity to um join them off the back of the work that I was doing at Prudential um and that was one of those you know sliding doors moments because at that point I was probably going to return to Australia I’d been overseas a few yearsat that point but that opportunity led me to stay in London and then you know led me to um you know just get the opportunity to travel more which is really what I loved I just love um traveling and and then yes I was with pricewater housecoopers which was a phenomenal experience I really enjoyed working there I worked with amazing people we were very much Project based we flew people from all over the worldto work on um us IPO related transactions and um and you know during that opportunity I then moved after another five years in the UK I moved to Hong Kong and then covered Asia so I wasbased out of Hong Kong spent quite a substantial time in Japan Korea um China as well as you know substantial time in Switzerland South Africa as well as traveling to a lot of other cities so um so I can definitely say I’ve ticked that element of traveling for work traveling for pleasure um through um all of those opportunities and one of the things that I noticed and this is kind of what fed me into next chapter raise and ultimately into Sofia as well which are the two companies that I’m founder and co-founders of um it is really you know I was really interested in kind of looking at these companies what was motivating them financially um you know kind of you know we were very gender balanced as an organization um particularly in the global Capital markets Group which was fantastic to see so it was really great to see you knowso much diversity and inclusion and I you know as I left pricewater housecoopers what I was interested in it was taking that and exploring that and seeing well how can we see greater diversity around the support for female Founders particularly around the financing they receive um because the statistics are dire interms of less than three percent of um uh Venture Capital um money goes to female Founders particularly Seoul female Founders and obviously we can talk about key person risking all those matters there but um you also see that and no there’s a you know less than seven percent um of um investment decision makers are female as well so you don’t just have a lot of women in the industry you don’t have enough female Founders being funded and so that’s what led me to launch next chapter raise and really that um was focused it kind of started as a crowd funding platform and has really moved into an education and coaching and connecting platform to support women on um not just Equity but also different types of financing you can look at so inaddition to crowd funding Grants revenue-based financing and obviously the equity aspect of of scaling your business and and I’ve just worked with a phenomenal amount of women and men in terms of the exposure I’ve had and then off the back of that I met my two co-founders in Sofia because wewere all