968 Marcia Dawood:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP968 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Marcia Dawood

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Marcia Dawood:

I became an angel investor in the early 2010s. So, by the time 2020 happened, I’m now a good seven, eight years in and I’m starting to have that investor fatigue. And I remember I went to a friend of mine who’s like very seasoned angel investor. And I said, hey, I don’t know about this angel investing stuff. You know, this is kind of rough. And he just kind of like laughed at me a little bit, like nicely and said, well, you know, I think you just need to like wait a wait a bit, you know.

Marcia Dawood:

Sure enough, in 2020 and through 2020 and 2021. I had over six exits. One was a 10X. And I will tell you, my faith in early-stage investing grew once again. I think that we’re kind of at that stage right now. We’ve been in this kind of dip and people are thinking, oh geez, when are we going to be able to get past this uncertainty and how can we gain our confidence back?

Melinda Wittstock:

We talk a lot on this podcast about how hard it is for female founders to raise angel and venture capital for their startups, so today we get the perspective of early-stage investor Marcia Dawood, a venture partner with Mindshift Capital and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association (ACA). Marcia, who also hosts The Angel Next Door podcast, shares the inside skinny of a very challenging investment climate, plus what investors are looking for, and why it’s vital more high net worth women start investing in women entrepreneurs.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, everyone, your host Melinda Wittstock here, and I admit, I’m not a big football fan but can I just share how excited I was to see a woman-led team win the Superbowl for the first time? So, congratulations to Jody Allen, who inherited the team, and has worked wonders inspiring her team to success. And to the beautiful message of love, joy and the beauty of diversity sent by Bad Bunny in his spectacular half-time show. He’s right: love is stronger than hate, and for those among us fearful and overwhelmed by what we’re witnessing in the U.S. right now, remember to ground yourself in love, show love in all you do, and love yourself. With that, welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, the podcast where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a five-time serial entrepreneur, and I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. If you’ve been listening to any of the past 966 episodes, please help us get the word out about the show. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Tell your friends and colleagues, share the episode and leave a quick 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate it. Thank you! 

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an investor who is trying to change the game of angel and venture capital funding for female founders. Marcia Dawood is an early-stage investor, author of Do Good While Doing Well, TEDx speaker, host of The Angel Next Door podcast, and associate producer on the award-winning documentary Show Her the Money.

Melinda Wittstock:

We all know the stats: Women entrepreneurs get less than 2% of the venture capital money—a percentage that hasn’t changed in 30 years—even though research shows female founders return between 60 to 72 cents more on every dollar invested than exclusively male teams. So, what’s up with that?

Melinda Wittstock:

Today Marcia and I dig deep into the structural challenges keeping women-led startups and women-led VC funds from raising anything near their male counterparts, through to the tightening of capital since inflation spiked in 2021. We talk about the ebb and flow of exits, because investors need lucrative M&A and IPO activity to reinvest in new deals, plus the impact of political and economic uncertainty on investor confidence. We also talk about the mindset shifts needed for women as both founders and investors, and how to encourage more women to become investors in other women so together we can shape the companies and society of tomorrow. Plus, Marcia shares exciting updates about her book “Unapologetic Wealth” and the future of the “Show Her the Money” documentary.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Marcia Dawood.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Marcia, welcome to Wings.

Marcia Dawood:

Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, you know, just before we started recording, we were kind of bemoaning a little bit the investment climate for female founders. But yes, generally everybody is struggling so much to raise money. So, what’s your perspective? What’s going on? Why is it so hard?

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah, what a good question. I probably am asked, I hate to say it, but almost daily for introductions like, am I personally investing right now? All of these things. And it is just really a tough climate out there. Anything I say is my opinion and not the opinion of anybody else that I’m affiliated with. But I do believe that in 2020 and 2021, we saw a lot of good things happening. I know that 2020, we saw a lot of liquidity. We saw mergers and acquisitions happening.

Marcia Dawood:

There was a lot of capital flowing. 2021 was like one of the top years for getting capital to companies. 2022, interest rates start to rise. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace, and we started to see that liquidity dry up. There wasn’t as much M&A activity. And what companies were starting to realize is, wow, this is what, what was relatively easy in, you know, a year or two ago is starting to get harder and harder. And especially newer companies that were coming on the scenes scene were really struggling. And if you’re an underrepresented founder, you were even struggling more.

Marcia Dawood:

So, then it got to be okay. Now we got to a point where they started to talk about interest rates starting to come down, the economy getting a little bit better, and then we had a new administration in 2025. Now, I’m going to put all politics aside here, but typically a Republican administration will be more about capital formation, and a Democratic administration is more about investor protection. So we, the collective, we, a lot of us in the investment space thought that 2025 would mean that we would see more capital flowing, we’d see more IPOs, which kind of trickles down to more M&A activity, meaning that more companies are going to be sold, meaning there’s going to be more liquidity in place, meaning that there’s going to be more capital to be able to go to these early stage companies, especially the ones that are doing the innovation that we really want to see in the world. However, we did not see that as much in 2025. But literally just in the last few days, I was talking to some people about this very topic. And the prediction moving forward for 2026 is that a lot of people do believe. Now, of course this is like crystal ball talking and I can’t say this for certain, but that 2026, we are starting to see more mergers and acquisitions happening.

Marcia Dawood:

We are starting to see bigger companies going toward IPO. So, what does that mean? I believe it means that we’re going to start to see more capital coming into the marketplace so that more people will feel comfortable making those investments and helping these early-stage companies to thrive.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s great. I hope you’re right. I mean, I think the other aspect of this though, and yeah, we can dance around the politics, but when you have an administration that’s all these tariffs that are on again, off again, like all the disruptions to supply chain, not really knowing what’s good; like just erratic, right?

Marcia Dawood:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, and my perspective is the one thing investors really don’t like is uncertainty. So, there’s all this uncertainty and global instability and realignment and all that stuff going on and people just freeze in that environment.

Marcia Dawood:

Agreed. 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Like it’s, it, it hasn’t actually been great, you know, for, for business in that sense. And then you have so much capital going to the large AI companies that just have like an insatiable need, you know.

Marcia Dawood:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

That capital that there’s nothing left for real innovation. And there’s so many deserving companies out there doing amazing things, but they’re starved 100 and really difficult to compete. So do you see like on one hand, okay, so maybe there are more IPOs and there starts to be a little bit more capital flow. But how does that uncertainty picture play in do you think, moving forward? 

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I’ll just talk, I’ll talk about this from my personal perspective. Okay, so, because everything kind of goes in cycles, right? So, I became an angel investor in the early 2010s. So, think about it, by the time 2020 happened, I’m now a good seven, eight years in and I’m starting to have that investor fatigue. And I remember I went to a friend of mine and I said, who’s like very seasoned angel investor. And I said, hey, I don’t know about this angel investing stuff. You know, this is kind of rough. And he just kind of like laughed at me a little bit, like nicely and said, well, you know, I think you just need to like wait a wait a bit, you know.

Marcia Dawood:

Sure enough, in 2020 and through 2020 and 2021. I had over six exits. One was a 10X. And I will tell you, my faith in early-stage investing grew once again. Like my, you know, it’s kind of like the, the ebbs and flows and when you’re in that kind of ebb period, that’s like, doesn’t now all of a sudden when something good happens and that horizon looks so much prettier. So, I think that we’re kind of at that stage right now. We’ve been in this kind of dip and people are thinking, oh geez, you know, I don’t know about this, and when are we going to be able to get past this uncertainty and how can we gain our confidence back? I think once we start to see those things happening more and more, and I personally am seeing it, I literally just got a phone call from a fund manager that I invested in a while back and they told me that there was an exit and I, you know, got a check. It was nice.

Marcia Dawood:

So, as we start to see those types of things happening, I think that the uncertainties that are out in the marketplace will start to not look as daunting because we, it’s more in perspective of what’s really happening overall in the marketplace.

Melinda Wittstock:

The other thing too is the exit timelines. Like traditionally that, okay, you put your money into a company, and you were, man, it was going pretty good if you, you got your money out in 10 years, say, right, right, right. And a lot of people aren’t necessarily up for that. But the exit timelines, given that just the pace of technological development conceivably can be and will be much faster than that. Where you have companies turning around in like two years, three years, five years. Do, do you see that? Do you see a trend towards that?

Marcia Dawood:

That would be glorious. I would love to see that. I have seen, in fact, just recently a fund manager came to us and said, hey, we need to do a two-year extension. So, for those listening, if you are an LP or a limited partner in a fund and the fund is going over their time horizon of what they originally said, they thought they’d be able to exit all the companies where they had invested capital, they are, they are able to make an extension. I have seen that also have seen companies though, to your point, that do have the type of innovation that other companies really need. And I was literally just having a conversation with someone about this recently. You know, a lot of these big companies, on the surface, if we just like didn’t really think much about it, we think, oh well, these big companies, they have lots of money for R and D, you know, research, development. They, they can make the things and do the things that they want to do, but that’s really not true.

Marcia Dawood:

They need to go out and buy these smaller startup companies because they’ve done the, the, all the back work, you know, all the kind of grunt work that needed to be done in order to get to a certain point. And then a bigger company can come in with their resources and really make it an outstanding innovation that the world really needs. So, I think that it’s the people that are making the things that are truly valuable in the world. And I’ll give you one example which would be, I was just talking with a company that makes a resin that is actually 1% compostable. And it’s very hard to find any type of plastic alternative that could be made into like a fork or an iron straw or anything like that that is 100% compostable. And so, I think like, if you’re really, really, truly solving a big problem, those are the companies that are going to get gobbled up and you will see like three-to-five-year type of horizon.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like I know that some investors and probably less seasoned investors will say, in a competitive sense, oh well, you’re building this, but what’s to stop Google from just doing the same thing?

Marcia Dawood:

Exactly. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

My response is always, well, you know, would Google rather just buy it or go through all the, all the heartache and you know, all the work to get the product market fit and like take all the risk? Like, why would they do that when they can just buy it?

Marcia Dawood:

Exactly, right, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, I, and, and I mean, in the mindset of founders too, I mean, this is the other thing in terms of educating found founders when you’re, if you’re taking angel and then venture institutional money, I mean, you are already selling part of your company, so you are already on that exit timeline. But I think a lot of founders don’t really necessarily think about their exit. Their company is their baby, they feel emotionally attached to it and they’re not necessarily thinking about, okay, how am I going to optimize this? Who are my likely exits? How can I do this? And, and emotionally even. Right, right. How to. So, so when you’re investing in companies, I mean, how big of a factor is that? Like if you think of your previous investments and what you look at, do, do you want founders to be a little bit cognizant of that at least?

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah, of course. I always say you need to have a company that’s solving a really big sticky, hairy problem and not be a company that has a solution, a problem. And I think those are the things that, you know, making sure that not only that, but to your point of like what, how much money they’re taking on at the beginning, how much of the, how much of the equity do they still have as founders in the company? How much have they given away too soon? I mean, all of those things are critical to look at when you’re thinking about making an investment in a company that has already taken on funds and is, you know, pretty far along in building whatever they’re trying to build. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, I’ll put on my venture hat. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve built five companies. Some of them really succeeded, some of them really didn’t. Like the timing was wrong or it’s like way too early on something or, or whatever, right. You know, usual drill. 

Melinda Wittstock:

And as a venture partner and an entrepreneur in residence, I’m seeing these amazing female founded companies primarily. We’re seeing amazing things in, in the market and women in particular who are, I don’t know, just pulling off miracles, bootstrapping, but they need capital to really seize market. It’s so frustrating to me to see just the amazing returns that women like. The data that shows that women return anywhere, depending on which report you’re reading, anywhere between 60 to 72 cents more on every dollar invested than men.

Marcia Dawood:

Amazing, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, we’ve been forced to be able to do more with less.

Marcia Dawood:

Yep. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that doesn’t mean that that’s how it should continue because with funding. Holy moly. I mean the, the, the decisions we’re making now about which companies get invested in is dictating our future. Like what kind of society we want to live in; what kind of companies do we want? What do we want the ethics of those companies to be? How do we contribute to society and such. So, what needs to happen to really change that dynamic for female founders? Like, we’ve got this scarcity environment right now, but we have these extra hurdles, you know, for women.

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

The data is really on our side. So, what do you think has to happen to change that whole dynamic?

Marcia Dawood:

Oh my goodness. I think, I think about this like on the daily, if not hourly. Right. Okay. So, in a nutshell, a couple things we need to get more women to be investors. And in order to do that, we have to get people to feel that they are confident that they can make bold decisions. Because if we as investors are willing to back the women who are getting more than 60 to 72 cents better to the dollar than men, with revenue and all the profitability and everything, then all of that can really make a huge difference. But what’s happened is if you, I mean, think about, on a very macro scale, think about women and how back even to the days of dowries, I mean, if you go back to the limiting beliefs that women have had ingrained in their brains, it’s not our fault.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Marcia Dawood, early-stage investor, host of The Angel Next Door podcast, and author of the upcoming book, Unapologetic Wealth.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Marcia Dawood:

This is just like how it’s been happening. But here we are, we’re at this cultural crossroads now where we do have the ability to build companies, make investments, do all these amazing things that women do. However, back in the back of our mind, like, we really have to work on the mindset. It’s not just going to change overnight. We have these opportunities, but we really have to empower ourselves and the younger generation to be able to go ahead and do the big things, do the bold things. And that is where I think the only way that we’re going to change this is to just keep talking about it, getting more people in the room, talking about it, getting people more comfortable with it, making it a regular everyday conversation. Because what I found, and I’ve done all kinds of things just trying to get women to be more comfortable with investing. I have a podcast, I wrote a book about demystifying angel investing, and I’ve had lots and lots of conversations.

Marcia Dawood:

And it just goes back to, okay, what is the actual problem? What’s holding women back? They just don’t think it’s something that’s talked about enough. They’re not comfortable with it because it’s kind of a niche thing. They’re just like kind of out there. So, I finally decided, okay, I’m gonna have to go all the way back to the beginning, write a prequel book to my first book called Unapologetic Wealth, where I’m basically trying to help women get past that. How do we get more people to just feel comfortable in those rooms? Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

When I was raising money for all my startups; I remember having conversations with high-net-worth women who had scads of money and they were easily writing million-dollar checks to charity.

Marcia Dawood:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you ask them for, I don’t know, 50 grand, 100 grand for a startup that was through enterprise, through entrepreneurship, actually solving the same problem, better, right, than the charity was, yes? And they would have a return. Seriously, like a hundred percent of the time. It was like, oh, no, my husband does that.

Marcia Dawood:

And that’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Powerful women with agency who, like, built their own careers. But no, “my husband does”. At first I thought it was a joke. Like, I literally laughed the first time. 

Marcia Dawood:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

It just like, it didn’t make sense to me. And, and this has been going on for years. So, what is that about? Like, oh, my goodness.

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah, yeah, that’s the part that. Oh my gosh. So, I interviewed all these people as I decided I was going to write this wealth book. And I was like, tell me your money stories. That’s basically, I just threw it out there to like, I don’t know, I might have put it on social media somehow, like, hey, if you have a money story, call me or whatever. And I was just baffled at the way that the amount of stories, the types of stories, women who run businesses who are super successful, really smart, amazing people. And they just said, well, I just let my husband or my financial advisor or whatever make all the decisions.

Marcia Dawood:

I don’t even really know where my bank accounts are. I finally like, kind of woke up to the idea that, oh my gosh, like they. The bucket or whatever you want to call it, where all the investments are. They don’t even look at it. They don’t know about it. They aren’t comfortable with it because it’s never been talked about to them.

Marcia Dawood:

They’re comfortable with the fear philanthropy bucket, and that’s about all that they know. So, I just got to a point where like, okay, we just, we got to keep talking about the. Got to get more people to say, hey, I want to be involved in the conversation. And. And part of the investment strategy really does have to include aligning my money with my values and what I really want to see happen in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. So, we’ve got all these different kind of structural problems. And then we also have a lot of education to do to help women understand the decision making of venture, how folks look at your startup, how to pitch, how to be on top of that conversation. I think it’s gotten a lot better. I mean, I see a lot of pitches and right now I’m really encouraged because hands down, women have been giving, just knocking it out of the park on their pitches compared to the men that show up.  Like a lot of men are showing up, sort of entitled, and they’re a little disheveled, and they’re like, decks aren’t that great. And they just have this expectation. And the women are just doing so much better.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, I think it has improved. But is there anything in particular that women could get better at? Even better, like, than we already are?

Marcia Dawood:

100%. And I think it goes back to what you were just saying. Like, yes, women have to, like, know all their numbers better. They have to know their business better than men. It’s just they. They almost have to, because the. There’s so many biases, unconscious biases out there with women and men.

Marcia Dawood:

I’m certainly not ragging on the men at all. But I really think that women need to feel that they are empowered to be bolder with their asking, with what they’re doing. 

Marcia Dawood:

And the other thing that I’ve found is women tend to…When they pitch, again, I’m generalizing, but when they’re pitching, they tend to want to tell everything in the pitch because they want to show, like, I know this and I’ve got it right, where a guy might get up there and he’ll give you a little snippet of what’s going on and maybe not tell the whole story, but he’ll get more attention because he drew in. The whole idea of the pitch is to draw in the person so that they’ll want to have a longer conversation with you. You can’t pitch for five minutes and have somebody make a decision about whether or not they’re going to invest. That’s usually never happens. Sometimes maybe, but no, usually it’s, how can we get to the next conversation? How can we get to the next conversation? So, I think if women felt empowered to be bold and to ask for those bold things in those pitches, they would go farther at the end and get more capital at the end.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s interesting about the boldness. I’ve found myself even saying to women where they say, say, oh, my numbers are really conservative. And I’ve said no. Want to see what it looks like when you’re really swinging for the fences here? Like, yeah, how can you make, you know, what would you have to do to make this a bigger opportunity? Like, first of all, they don’t ask for, you know, as much money as they actually need. But their projections sometimes are just too low. Like, they could do better, right?

Marcia Dawood:

100%. Yes, they could. They could. Women tend to be realistic. Realistically conservative or conservatively realistic, maybe either way, you want to say it where men will just be like, hey, yeah, I got this. It’s kind of like when they, you know, the example of job interview, you know, there’s five qualifications. Women think, if I have four, not qualified, can’t even apply. A guys will have one, and they’ll be like, I got this.

Marcia Dawood:

I’m gonna rock this.

Melinda Wittstock:

This job.

Marcia Dawood:

It’s that kind of mentality. If we could get women to just be like, okay, you need. Yes. You need to be realistic. Yes. We don’t want to see pie in the sky numbers. But at the same time, if you’re given the capital, if you’re given the resources that you need, can you build this company? And in a lot of cases, if you really push women and asking those questions, they will say, yes, yes, I can. And then you’re like, great, then you need to be shouting that from the rooftops and not be afraid to fail.

Marcia Dawood:

I think in a lot of cases, women are so afraid to fail that. And when I say fail, that might mean, okay, you’re not going to hit that one number. But, you know, we have to keep putting it out there. And we let guys fail all the time. And we’ve seen that happen over and over again. We have to let women feel like they have the same agency.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. And I think. But they, you know, in a lot of ways they don’t. 

Marcia Dawood:

Right, right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, I mean, there’s a very real, very real reason, I guess, for that. 

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

But as long as enough of us really do that, I. I remember years ago, I was hosting these retreats for women, and I remember in the sales calls saying, hey, how can we all play a bigger game? And I started to notice there’d be this. This split second of fear in their eyes at the words “bigger game.”

Marcia Dawood:

Right. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I was like, wait, what’s that about? And why are so many women creating small businesses? Why are there fewer women, not very many, saying, hey, I’m building a billion-dollar business without question or apology or any kind of guilt. You know what I mean?

Marcia Dawood:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Some sort of underlying subconscious thing that that’s not my right to do that. Or I don’t value myself enough to think I could even do that. Or, like, because they’re not very many who have done that.

Marcia Dawood:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, I think that’s something that needs to change. I want to get back a little bit more to the, like the, the, the, the exit timelines and things as well from a venture perspective. I mean, one of the things we’re working on at Zero Limits Capital is applying the, the methodologies that the, the, you know, the general partner of the fund has perfected over more than 500 companies now at later stage to increase their exit multiples wildly around these very specific 26 value accelerators. Right. That really help founders think and operationalize what’s growing. Actually, the asset value of your business, not just your, you know, the things that people normally focus on, which is like revenue and earnings. There are other things that really boost the value of your company. And so, he’s regularly 10x20x all these companies at a later stage.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, his whole thing is let’s apply that methodology to startups at an earlier stage like from seed and into Series A and, and accelerate them, you know, to, to exit faster. Do people really need to be the, to do other venture funds really need to be thinking more in that way to, to, to, to crack this log jam? Right.

Marcia Dawood:

Yes, yes, I do. I do see that because like they kind of caught, I believe a lot of people call it like the valley of death, you know.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Because you’re, that’s like from his presentation, like literally he has a chart. Oh dear.

Marcia Dawood:

Okay. Yeah, so we’re, we’re on the same, we’re on the same page here. Yes. Because they get to a point where they can either like bootstrap or they’re getting, you know, the basic stuff from, you know, angel level or whatever. But once they get into that, I need a Series B. Well, even A nowadays, but like, even, you know, getting into like a series B which is, you know, bigger dollars, it’s like how do you find that? It’s like that’s the largest chasm that they have to cross. It’s not even once they get into like a seed, you know, they’re bigger. 

Marcia Dawood:

I hate to say it, but it’s, it just is easier. So, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of fund managers recently really trying to talk to their companies and say, okay, how can we get you either past that or get you acquired so that then, you know, new company is going to help you get that, you know, to that bigger goal. But yeah, it’s a really, It’s a tough place.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s interesting because you, if you think about it, the longer you’re in the market, the more money it needs and the more risk you’re introducing. Right. When you’re on that growth trajectory, you want to be selling at the point where the velocity of growth is at the highest. And the longer you’re in the market, the, the more that it’s. Not that you’re not growing anymore, but the rate of, of growth is slowing.

Marcia Dawood:

That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Invariably. Right. And so, and you’re, you’re risk, you’re, you’re introducing more risk. Where on the other hand, from a founder’s perspective, you, if you sell earlier, you have a larger stake in the company. Right? You have the ability to leave some money in the company that just bought you as well. See, presumably even have another bite of the apple later on. But I find a lot of founders aren’t necessarily very cognizant of these kind of dynamics.

Marcia Dawood:

No, I completely agree with you. In fact, I’ll give an example. There was a company a couple years ago, was doing really, really well, was getting even offers for acquisition. And the founders and even several of the investors said, oh no, we can keep growing the company, we can get it bigger, we can get to that bigger valuation. And just like you just described, it started to trail off. The revenue started to trail off. They weren’t doing as well. And they did eventually get acquired after people started getting nervous.

Marcia Dawood:

The, the investors were like, oh dear, we should have, and we should have exited when we could have. And, you know, they, they still got a decent exit. But it’s almost like when you’re flying high like that, companies are bought, companies are not sold. So, I always want to, I always want to tell people, like, people will come in and buy your company because what you have is so valuable. But don’t think you’re going to go, hey, I’m, I’ve heard so many founders tell me, well, I’m going to go get an investment banker and we’re going to go see if we can’t get this company sold. I’m like, good luck to that, because that is not happening. Like, if you don’t have something that is just so great, you’re really not. I mean, maybe you’ll get a halfway decent exit, maybe you’ll get an asset sale.

Marcia Dawood:

But I mean, come on, you, you really want to be selling your company when you’re at that high point. And if you think the high point is going to get a lot higher, sometimes that doesn’t happen.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, we have a phrase for this at Zero Limits Capital. You can Be right or you can be rich. 

Melinda Wittstock:

The tricky thing for the founder, though, like, you put all your blood, sweat and tears into this. It’s part of your identity. And I think sometimes selling a company feels like that. And then you get this. I don’t know, you can feel like when things are going well, they’re always going to be going well. You can, you can’t see all the different forces around you that you can’t control.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, whether it’s economic collapse or something happens or like, I don’t know, there’s so many different things beyond your control. So, like, knowing that timing is exactly…

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Is super critical. So, Marcia, the work you’re doing in educating people about all of this is so vital. So, imagine you talk about this at a lot on your podcast and an associate producer of the documentary, Show Her The Money, which is great. We need a, we need a sequel to that. Yes. Bigger distribution. 

Marcia Dawood:

Well, I, I can give you a little hint, a little preview of what’s happening in 2026 with the film. It will be going on to streaming in March of 2026. So, stay tuned for that. You can go to show her the Money Movie dot com. It’s all one word. Show her the Money Movie. And also, there is talk of a docuseries.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, wonderful.

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness. Keep me posted about that. I think this is so important. Women need to get together and talk about it. We need to catalyze this ecosystem where women are investing in each other. And whether that investment comes as like, we just buy each other’s products or we’re actually literally writing checks or we’re promoting each other or like, you know, mentoring each other beyond the, hey, you go, girl.

Melinda Wittstock:

But like, real mentoring, that that ecosystem really needed to be created. And I see a lot of women doing this, but we’re, we’re sort of a little scattered though, still. Like, yeah, we need more coordination. I see a lot of women creating things, podcasts, books, that, this and that, movies, whatever. There’s lots of podcasts about it. 

Melinda Wittstock:

But like, how can we all coordinate with each other? What would that look like?

Marcia Dawood:

Yeah, we’ve actually talked about that at the Angel Capital Association, and you know, kind of at a broader level with a bunch of fund managers. You know, how do we do that? You know, to your point, again, I just think it, it means that we have to keep having these conversations and in some cases they’re going to be fragmented, in some cases they’re going to be bigger. But the more we keep talking about it and the more people start to feel comfortable with it and it becomes an everyday conversation. My biggest problem is I go to, you know, the neighborhood cookout or, you know, cocktail party or something like that. This isn’t a topic of conversation among women. So, we need to make it so that it does become more of an everyday conversation. That is when we’re going to really start to see change.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. Women, I don’t know whether it’s just you know, not wanting to talk about money. Whereas guys have these conversations that sort of go like, hey, I’m in on this thing. Do you want to come in? Or like, you know, oh, yeah, they’ll…

Marcia Dawood:

…Like text, like text each other on the golf course and stuff. Hey, you in for 50 grand on this? I’m like, what, what? Who, who does that? Like, I’ll hear these stories, you know, for my angel friends. And I’m like, what? Like, no, women, we don’t do that. Like, we need, we need a different golf course, you know, hilarious.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, my son has a startup. He’s 19 years old, right. He’s a second-year business student. It’s a great startup. It’s like a potential unicorn. It’s really cool. 

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring him, but we’re, we’re at the chiropractor and he tells the chiropractor his idea, right, of what he’s building. It’s like a hyper local social app for dog lovers that connects them in real life and creates a sense of community and belonging. It’s all gamified. It’s AI. 

Marcia Dawood:

Really. That’s very cool.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, and so he just describes this to the chiropractor and the chiropractor said, oh, hey, “I’m in. How can I get in on the ground floor?”

Marcia Dawood:

Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, this has never happened to me.

Marcia Dawood:

Right, right.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m just like, oh, my God. I mean, I’m like, proud that I’m his mom, but, like, I can’t imagine my daughter having, like, even with the same idea that that would have been the same result.

Marcia Dawood:

Right, Yeah, I know. And, you know, I literally just talked to this other friend of mine who’s a law partner, and she was like, hey, I’m just going to tell you, like, even within the law practice, she’s like, around the water cooler, the guys are talking about their deals and this and that, and the women are literally still talking about their shoes and their kids. And it’s like, okay, wait, no, we gotta. Everybody needs to be talking about, you know, the deals, the things like that. That’s how we’re going to get more people to feel comfortable.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s this huge generational transfer of wealth to women. I forget the number. Just a massive amount. So, women are sitting on a lot of money.

Marcia Dawood:

Yes. And I’m very worried about that from the standpoint that if we don’t keep educating women on what to do with that money so that, you know, it can grow, they can pass on generational wealth and they can help to make the innovations we want to see in the world. I have statistics in my new book about how much money is actually sitting in checking accounts and in cash. And that’s not good. That’s not good for our economy, that’s not good for innovation, that’s not good for anything. So, we need to, we need to get out of the scarcity mindset and into an abundance mindset.

Melinda Wittstock:

We do. And so, your book is coming out in March on a month, Unapologetic Wealth. I want to make sure that, you know, everybody knows how to, like if they can pre order that book or how.

Marcia Dawood:

Yes, it’s on Amazon now. Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org all the places you can just look it up. There’s no other books called Unapologetic Wealth.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay, and your other book, your first book is Do Good While Doing Well. I think that’s critical to women. Feel like their money is going towards good things, like aligned with their values and all of that. You got exactly FedEx out there as well. You’ve got a podcast. Tell me the name of your podcast so everybody can find that as.

Marcia Dawood:

Well. Yeah, the podcast is called The Angel Next Door. Just like the millionaire next door, but with angel.

Melinda Wittstock:

Investing. Fantastic. Well, Marcia, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today, I feel, is a good way to start the new year.

Melinda Wittstock:

Awesome. We’ll crack this somehow. 

Marcia Dawood:

That’s right. Thanks so much for having me.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Marcia Dawood is a venture partner with Mindshift Capital and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association (ACA), host of The Angel Next Door podcast, author of Do Good While Doing Well and the upcoming book Unapologetic Wealth.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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