Evaluating impact startups in a post-COVID remote environment: insights on performing remote due diligence from global investors and strategies to tackle the persistent gender gap

Catalyst Fund spoke with its Circle of 85+ global investors to understand their lessons learned about best practices for evaluating startups in emerging markets in today’s post-COVID remote environment – when we can no longer rely on face-to-face interactions with founders and their customers. We identified 4 core areas they should dig into, as well as how to understand whether founders have the potential to overcome key barriers often hindering other companies in their sector. Finally, we spoke with female VCs to understand what investors can do to address the gender gap for female founders in emerging markets, and how we should think about adjusting our sourcing and due diligence processes to provide more opportunities for women founders.
In this panel, we’ll speak with investors from multiple markets to understand how they’ve been able to keep deals flowing despite remote restrictions, and how we can collectively think about adjusting our sourcing and due diligence processes to address the gender gap and ensure support for the most promising founders.