Our Mission

Launch X was founded in 2015. Founder Anna Khan was at Harvard Business School, where she spent time researching the lack of female funded start ups in the United States. Venture capitalists invested $48.3B in 4,356 deals in 2014, an increase of 61% in dollars invested over 2013. (Source: Babson College, The Diana Project). She realized that while more money was pouring into technology, fewer women had access to the dollars invested. In 2014, only 2.7% of the companies that raised VC money had female CEOs, an abysmal number by any yardstick. While the number of women launching businesses is increasing drastically (a 68% increase between 1997-2014 and 2x the growth rate of businesses owned by men), the proportion of investments in female-led companies is not.* Over a decade later, the numbers have not improved.

There is no shortage of organizations focusing on mentoring women interested in entrepreneurship. In fact, there are funds that have built their thesis around investing in female-led companies. All these efforts work in conjunction with each other, but no single organization alone is able to provide a specific toolkit that teaches female CEOs how to get access to institutional money. Launch X seeks to fulfill this need.