For years, conversations about women in entrepreneurship have focused on what we supposedly lack: confidence, networks, risk tolerance, or access.
Shelley Kuipers believes that conversation is backwards.
As co-founder of The51, a venture capital platform focused on increasing women’s participation as both investors and entrepreneurs, Kuipers has spent years thinking about how women build wealth and grow businesses. And from her perspective, women aren’t short on anything. What has often been missing is a clear invitation to participate in the spaces where investment decisions are being made.
“If we were in a room getting access to a deal, there were certainly no women around the table,” she said. “We just kept asking, ‘Where are the women?’”
Inviting women in
Kuipers’ perspective is shaped by more than three decades in Canada’s technology sector. She began her career at a Calgary software company in the early 1990s, joining as one of its earliest employees and getting a front-row seat to what it takes to build a company from the ground up. After the founders sold the business in 1999, she launched her own ventures and eventually began investing herself.
Since then, she watched wave after wave of technological change reshape industries. Yet one thing remained consistent: women entrepreneurs were finding innovative ways to solve problems and create impact, while often facing barriers when it came to accessing capital.
At the same time, there were women out there with the ability to invest, but no invitation to the table.
That experience eventually led her, alongside co-founders Alice Reimer and Judy Fairburn, to launch The51.
What started out as a grassroots experiment has since grown into a national investing platform. To date, The51 has activated more than $71 million in women-led capital, engaged more than 200 investors and funded 36 ventures across a range of sectors.
Most recently, the team announced a $30 million fund backed by BMO and 17 women co-anchors, creating even more opportunities to invest in women-led or co-led businesses, where women have an equitable stake in the business.
Still, Kuipers is quick to point out that there is more work ahead.
Part of the challenge, she argues, is that traditional venture capital still relies on “pattern matching” – investors funding founders and ideas that resemble previous success stories. Women frequently bring different experiences, networks and perspectives, making it harder to fit those established patterns.
“I think there’s a bias in the system,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is create another system.”
A national opportunity
For Kuipers, that work goes beyond venture capital. She sees greater participation by women in investing as a significant economic opportunity for Canada, not simply a conversation about equity.
“We’re an overperforming, underinvested asset class, and largely we’re doing the unpaid work in the country,” she said. “I think there’s an opportunity for us to quantify that. I think women’s capital, spending power, ingenuity, and innovation…it’s a massive unlock for Canada.”
Yet too often, she argues, women are still discussed primarily through the lens of social policy rather than economic growth.
“Women are sitting at the economic table and shaping economic policies just like our male counterparts,” she said. “It’s time we’re part of that larger ecosystem.”
Recent conversations hosted by The51 across Canada have only reinforced that message.
One insight, in particular, has stayed with her.
“Women were saying, ‘Don’t offer me more persuasion or education. I just want to be in the room.'”
For Kuipers, that sentiment speaks to what comes next.
“The ambition is there, the courage is there, the confidence is there,” she added. “Now, how do we unlock that ingenuity and unlock that capital?”
Lisa Thibodeau
