SEEDS OF SUCCESS 

Golden Seeds’ Chicago chapter is shaping a community dedicated to evaluating and funding inspiring, women-led companies.

Golden Seeds, the largest angel investment group to invest exclusively in U.S.-based, women-led startups, has opened a chapter in Chicago. The network’s ninth chapter is led by Managing Directors Susan Abrams and Angela Allen and will grow Golden Seeds’ Chicago and Midwestern presence.

A widely circulated statistic claims only 2 percent of venture capital funding goes to all-female founding teams. Yet, as Golden Seeds co-CEOs Loretta McCarthy and Jo Ann Corkran explained in a recent Fast Company essay, this narrative discounts significant changes in angel investing—over the past 20 years, angel funding to women-led startups has increased from 3 percent to 30 percent.

That’s encouraging improvement in the early stages of the venture market, but 75–80 percent of all later-stage VC funding still goes to companies with all-male founding teams. And on the investor side, women hold just 15 percent of partner or decision-making roles at VC firms, according to a 2025 study by Founders Forum Group. These facts persist despite research showing that companies founded or co-founded by women generate more revenue per dollar raised than all-male founding teams.

This systemic challenge sparked the creation of Golden Seeds in 2004. The organization was established to create an environment where women entrepreneurs could be seriously considered for capital investment and angels could gain access to opportunities to invest in these innovative companies. Since then, Golden Seeds has invested more than $200 million in 279 women-led companies – startups with at least one women founder or woman in an operating C-suite role. These companies have landed an additional $2.5 billion in follow-on capital.

For Allen, an executive coach and seasoned corporate and nonprofit board member, getting involved in Golden Seeds provided a chance to shift the paradigm. “There are amazing things being done out there, and if we allow the bias of thinking ‘women really can’t do that’ to get in the way, we’re missing out on great things,” she says. As a member of an all-female executive team at a company that had a 10x exit, she also saw firsthand the challenges women faced when raising capital. “We had to forgo being considered a women-owned business, even though 100 percent of our executive team running the business were women, in order to play at the level that we wanted to play,” she says, reflecting on how they lost women-owned business status after taking a majority investment by a male-led venture capital firm.

Abrams, previously CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center and board member of the Illinois Finance Authority, recognized that starting a Golden Seeds chapter was a chance to help build something important in Chicago.

“It’s very much an entrepreneurial endeavor,” Abrams says. “I think a lot of our colleagues who are drawn to this work are also builders and want to be part of something that feels very exciting here in Chicago right now. We’re learning every second and contributing to how people are thinking about solving pain points for consumers or innovating to make humanity healthier.”

For Trish Thomas, co-founder of Evanston-based healthy snack company Every Body Eat, being backed by Golden Seeds was a full-circle moment. At her first meeting with Golden Seeds, she recalls, “There were 7 people in the room.” Today the Chicago chapter has more than 25 members, joining nearly 300 active Golden Seeds members nationwide. Together, they form a multi-faceted investment organization with its own funds.

“Golden Seeds is a very friendly way to learn about investing and to build investing muscle,” Thomas says. “And to connect to women doing interesting things.”

She feels that many women shy away from investing even though they are naturally positioned to succeed at it—they have access to significant capital, control household spending, and they are primary consumers who are keenly aware of trends. What’s missing is access to deal flow.

“Golden Seeds is not traditional venture. They back only companies led by women, which have been traditionally underfunded,” Thomas notes. “And their support and networks have helped us bring in new customers.”

In 2025, after growing into a new factory kitchen in Evanston, Every Body Eat was in expansion mode. Looking for a capital infusion, Thomas sought out Golden Seeds. The Golden Seeds investment was a runaway success; Every Body Eat products are now available in 5,500 retail locations. “Their diligence was more intense than Bain or KPMG,” Thomas points out, noting this rigor runs straight through the Golden Seeds organization.

Allen says this rigor is one of the keys to Golden Seeds’ success. “There are amazing solutions to real problems that people are coming up with. But that alone is not a guarantee for success,” she explains. “We’re really drilling into understanding how well they understand what it’s going to take to take an amazing idea and bring it to fruition.”

Abrams says that the quality of the team is critical to any company they’ll seriously consider. A decision won’t be based on a good idea or meeting a revenue target. “We’re looking for a leadership team that really exhibits grit and resilience. A team that has the ability to take input, to pivot, and to build.”

And in that build phase, Abrams argues that the diversity and depth of Golden Seeds’ membership is a significant competitive advantage. Golden Seeds members are doctors, Ph.Ds, accountants, bankers, attorneys, entrepreneurs, marketers, product specialists, and engineers, and investing membership is not limited to women. “On almost any deal that we look at, we can put together a really interesting team,” Abrams says. As a result, the range of companies being supported is exceedingly broad, from healthy snacks to biomedical engineering to fintech to artificial intelligence (EliseAI is a major Golden Seeds success story with a recent valuation of $2.2 billion). Those teams not only vet and approve companies for investment but also become critical mentors and advisors to the founders they support.

Thomas notes her Every Body Eat team is in routine communication with Golden Seeds, and a frequent beneficiary of its network and its deep well of connections, not just in Chicago, but from coast to coast. She couldn’t be happier with the results.

“Ten years from now,” Thomas says, “we’ll have proved together that woman-owned businesses deliver outsize returns. Period.”

Allen further punctuates the sentiment. “We would love our work here to put us out of business in a sense, because it’s obvious that the smartest people could be any gender. They can have any skin color. It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t care. We should be able to invest in and support the best people wherever they are.”

For more information, visit goldenseeds.com.