Capital For Women Who Mean Business
The Story
F5 Collective began with a clear ambition: to close the funding gap for women in business. We started as a traditional gender-lens venture fund investing in high-growth companies. But as we worked alongside hundreds of women founders and developed our Theory of Change, we uncovered a far bigger opportunity.
The problem was not simply that women received less funding. It was that the funding system itself had been built for a different type of business.
While venture capital works for a small number of high-growth technology companies, most women are building profitable businesses in services, health, consumer and commerce. Businesses with customers, revenue and strong fundamentals, but few funding options designed for the way they grow.
That insight changed everything.
Today, F5 Collective is building the financial products, capital solutions and commerce infrastructure designed for the modern economy, helping more women access the funding they need to build enduring businesses and create lasting wealth.
The Discovery
Our research showed that 97% of women globally are building businesses in the sectors that power everyday economies. Real businesses, generating real revenue, creating jobs and serving communities at scale.
Yet the capital available to women has too often been designed for the outlier. The unicorn.
That was the misalignment.
The Result
Capital. Commerce. Change.
The funding system was not built for the businesses women actually build.
We are building it now. Starting with the data that proves the opportunity. And the products designed around how women actually grow.
Theory of Change
The challenge is not a lack of capable women. It is a lack of financial products designed for the businesses they actually build.
Closing the funding gap requires more than deploying capital. It requires redesigning the system that determines where capital flows.
At F5 Collective, we believe lasting change happens across three connected layers.
Capital: Funding solutions designed around how women build businesses. Preserving ownership while providing the capital to start, grow, acquire and scale.
Confidence: The education, tools and networks that enable women to make informed decisions and build sustainable wealth.
Systems: Better data, greater transparency and evidence-based policy that reshape how financial institutions, investors and governments allocate capital.
Our goal is a system where more women can build businesses, acquire businesses, preserve ownership and create generational wealth.
Fund One
The F5 Collective Fund One has achieved a successful portfolio exit. Established as a gender-lens venture capital fund, Fund One invested in women founders building high-growth technology companies across Australia, the UK and the US. Our mandate required a woman on the founding team with a meaningful equity stake, ensuring capital flowed directly to female leadership and ownership.
Fund One also became one of the most important learning experiences in F5 Collective's history. Working alongside founders gave us a front row seat to the realities of women's entrepreneurship. While venture capital was the right solution for a small number of businesses, it became clear that most women were building different types of companies with different capital needs and different pathways to growth.
That insight reshaped everything.
Fund One did more than invest in exceptional founders. It provided the evidence that has informed everything F5 Collective has built since: a broader vision of capital that supports women not only to raise investment, but to build, acquire, grow and own businesses across the full economy.
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Lina Xu
Telecare - ACQUIRED
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Zoe Kalar
WeAre8 Founder
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Zara Lord
uPaged
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Paula Burton
Mass Dynamics
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Jodie Baker
Xakiatech
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Frances Atkins
Givvable
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Naomi Vowels
Givvable
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Carolina Dreifuss
Sync Technologies
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Nicole Gibson
Love out Loud
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Shivani Gopal
Elladex
The Team
People who have spent their careers creating, scaling and backing businesses.
Our team brings together entrepreneurs, owners, operators, investors, executives and strategists who have built companies from the ground up, led global funds, deployed capital, advised policy makers and worked across some of the world's most influential commercial and investment networks.
What unites us is more than experience. It is a shared belief that the next generation of wealth will be created through ownership and that women deserve a financial system designed to help them build it.
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Divya Reddy is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor to early-stage companies and mom of two boys (arguably her most complex start-up). She’s an Executive Affiliate at the IQSS Foundry at Harvard, helping turn bold research and ideas into ventures with real-world impact. Passionate about supporting founders, she actively advises and mentors early-stage companies.
Previously, she co-founded Pyrium, a marketplace that opened startup investing to both accredited and non-accredited investors.
Before her shift into entrepreneurship and investing, Divya spent over a decade in Banking and Capital Markets, leading global teams and building risk programs at some of the world’s biggest banks. She brings that same mix of rigor and adaptability to the entrepreneurial world today.
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Levent is the Group CEO of Cornwalls. He specialises in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial services law and capital raisings. He has more than 23 years experience advising corporates, financial investors and financial institutions, and has led, managed and closed many high profile mergers and acquisition transactions, fundraisings and financings. Levent also has a passion for creating companies and has founded and invested in numerous successful start-ups throughout his career.
Levent completed his Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws (with Honours) from the University of Melbourne.
Levent also sits on many local and international boards including Western Bulldogs FC and Terracycle.
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Wendy Fergie is a fund manager with over 30 years experience across debt, private equity and financial services. She is CIO of F5 Collective and serves on the Advisory Board for SWEEF Capital as well as advising and mentoring early-stage businesses with a strong focus on emerging fund managers, entrepreneurs and advancing diversity in investment. Previously, she held senior roles at National Mutual, AXA, and AllianceBernstein, founded the IFM Debt team and was a founding board member of the CFA Society of Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor of Economics, Graduate Diploma in Psychology, Diploma in Financial Planning, and is a CFA Charterholder.
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Linda Morris is a writer, cook and Hollywood Brat who has spent more than 30 years working in entertainment production and feature film development, crafting blogs for health and wellness websites, mentoring and editing authors and supporting corporate staff well-being.
She provides feedback and guidance to celebrities seeking to share their life journeys, helps screenwriters develop, pitch and discover their stories and has served as an Editorial Director, SEO and digital content writer, journalist, story editor and creator of social expression for industry-standard Hallmark Cards.
Linda has two produced screenplays to her credit: Multiple Sarcasms and Amazing Racer. She currently serves as Creative Director for F5 Collective, where she focuses on gathering and sharing founder stories with the F5 community and beyond.
In 2024, Linda published her first novel, The Grisly Goremet and continues to mentor both fiction and nonfiction writers while creating her own work, writing and editing blogs, and balancing life as a single mother to two sons, two dogs and a revolving door of rabbits.
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Tracey is a visionary leader reimagining how women access capital, build businesses and create generational change. With a background in financial markets and advisory, she is pioneering innovative funding models, rethinking lending products and driving policy reforms to dismantle systemic barriers that have long constrained women in business.
Her work spans the intersection of finance, commerce and community, where she is building new systems designed to unlock women’s economic power at scale. Tracey’s approach combines founder-friendly capital, curated pathways to market and wraparound expertise, creating the conditions for women to grow boldly, lead unapologetically and build lasting impact.
She is dedicated to rewriting the rules of business and finance so women are not only included in the economy but positioned to own it.
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Kelly Kimball is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, political activist and lecturer who focuses on disruptive strategies that challenge regulatory barriers and promote women’s causes.
The cofounder and executive chairman of Vitu, Kelly demonstrates the value of progressive ideologies in the corporate world.
As the founder of F5 Collective, Kelly aims to create gender parity in the investment space.
