Amber Illig, General Partner at The Council Fund
The Council, the consortium of all-female operators that’s been joining cap tables since early 2019, today announced their venture arm and its $5 million debut fund, The Council Fund. Members of The Council’s community angel invest outside of their day jobs at companies like Slack, Flexport, Brex, Airbnb, Uber, Square, and Figma. Now having grown to 80+ members, The Council community has become a powerful deal flow engine. The fund focuses on backing companies sourced through its community as well as other high-growth, early-stage startups that fit its thesis.
Being composed of 82 all-female operators in tech and venture and having sourced 44% of deals the fund has invested in, serving as a powerful differentiator for the fund, the angel community is uniquely all-female, although The Council Fund invests in everyone. It began as a group of women who were interested in angel investing but not seeing themselves reflected in angels they knew or saw on Twitter or IRL. As more women became aware of the group, the community grew. Each angel has their own source of deal flow and perspective to add to the deal discussion.
Founded by Amber Illig, the fund aims to build off of her track record of angel investing in operators who are stepping out on their own to transform legacy industries across Vertical SaaS, Fintech, and Healthcare.
“At every stage of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge tech (Cruise, Snap, Apple, Eli Lilly, Atmos) and legacy industries (manufacturing, logistics, pharma, construction). I’ve seen firsthand how leading firms across different industries still depend on legacy software to get important work done and serve customers. There’s a huge opportunity in building software for these fields that are considered ‘unsexy’ or ‘too complex’. The complexity is real, and founders tackling these spaces must be resilient and uniquely suited for the job. Because I had early success angel investing in ~30 startups along this thesis, I decided to start The Council Fund to allow others to invest in this thesis alongside me,” shares Illig, who has worked at companies of all different stages and helped several of them grow into the next phase: Snap from pre-IPO to IPO, Cruise from 400 to 2500 employees, and Atmos as they prepare to scale from Seed to Series A.
Proven Operators Turned Founders
Illig admits that one of her main passions is to invest in proven operators turned founders as they bring creative solutions and tech’s best practices to unglamorous industries. “Since I invest in pre-seed and seed, the founder is the most important factor in my decision. I try to understand how the experiences they’ve had in the past will provide them with resilience and unfair advantage. Building the database, designing/coding the product, hiring the team around you, or closing the first 100 customers is more impressive to me than having filled an executive role at a stable company,” she explains.
Being fortunate enough to have had some help from her parents and be able to work her way through college, she was able to pay off her student loans in a couple of years. Immediately after, Illig started looking for alternative ways to invest her money. She wasn’t satisfied with the status quo - as she says “invest in the S&P 500 and let it be like everyone else”. But when she looked into alternative asset classes, she quickly found that she was well below the salary and net worth requirements to invest outside of the public stock market.
“So I stayed there because it was my only option. Since then, many alternative investing platforms have been created to help people study the stock market, learn from each other, and legally invest in alternative assets. Years later when I could finally afford to angel invest and saw regulations shifting, I looked back and hoped that the next generation would have the option to diversify into higher reward, higher risk categories sooner than I did.”
Her journey in the angel investment space started in late 2018, after some modest financial wins when she made a conscious decision to carve off a piece of her net worth that she otherwise would have spent on grad school, and invest it in startups instead. She wanted to see if she enjoyed angel investing and if she was any good at it. “The problem was, I had some high-quality deal flow from ex-coworkers starting companies, but the total deal volume was low. Additionally, I was trying to understand the angel investing process and associated jargon as an outsider. I started asking around if anyone knew female angel investors I could learn from,” she starts her story.
It turns out she was not alone. In 2019, The Council angel community launched as a consortium with ~10 founding members, including herself. They had all experienced similar roadblocks and wanted to share deals and learn from each other. “There were a couple of professional investors in the group, and they really helped get the rest of us up to speed. Each of us started naturally sharing our own deal flow, and before we knew it, the word was spreading.”
Illig stepped in to lead and intentionally grow the community. Almost four years later, they are now 80+ members. “I still hear similar stories from new members as they join. There’s a sense of relief when they realize that there is no such thing as a dumb question and that all of us have something to add to deal flow and diligence, given our networks and experiences.”
Rethinking The Approach To Healthcare Experience
One of the key areas of the investment focus for Illig and her team will be healthcare. As a healthcare patient, she’s had the full gamut of experiences e.g. spending years trying to get a symptom diagnosed. “This past year, I basically moved into my OBGYN’s office as I prepared to deliver my daughter (appointments start off monthly and become weekly toward the end). In all of these experiences, I met incredibly talented nurses and doctors. The only points of frustration I had were due to integration and logistical challenges between doctors, specialists, and hospitals. Healthcare professionals deserve systems that set them up for success with patients. Patients deserve seamless experiences that address their needs without wasting their time. I love to find companies that are rethinking the entire experience,” she adds.
The Council Fund will invest in 30 companies in total, has already completed its first capital close, and is already co-invested with a16z, M13, Susa Ventures, Y Combinator, and Forerunner. The first 10 investments include Syndicate, Rezilient Health, Bounty, Floom/Floomx, Azalio, CloudEagle, Thingtesting, and several more in stealth.
The firm is backed by professional investors, executives, founders, and operators, including Bain Capital Ventures, Susa Ventures’ Courtney Buie Lipkin, Invariantes Fund’s Alejandro Zelaya, Boost VC’s Maddie Callander, and serial LP Susan Kimberlin; executives at Cruise, Guild Education, J.P. Morgan, and First Republic Bank; founders of Strobe, Atrium, Basis, Facet Data, Baratza, and Dryvebox; and current and former operators from Cruise, Snap, Slack, Robinhood, Salesforce, Forward, BloomTech, Twitter, Fellow, and DoorDash.
In order to support portfolio founders post-investment, Illig has built a team of early builders in various functions that share equity in the fund and are on deck to help them.
“In my experience as an operations leader, I’ve seen the importance of gaining cross-functional input ahead of product launches and major internal changes. I want founders in our portfolio to have the same level of access, earlier than they would normally. I am specifically bringing on advisors that have helped companies scale to new levels and/or built out functions for the first time. They’ve been in the trenches and are ready to help.”
Portfolio advisors include Anabel Lippincott Paksoy, who led People Ops at Opendoor as it grew from 30 to 600 employees; Rohini Pandhi, Product Lead at Block for the past 6.5 years (Square Invoices, Square Payments, and now Bitcoin Wallet); Stephanie Engle, first Product Designer at Cruise and previously at Facebook, Airbnb, and Snap; and Sonia Baschez, Head of Marketing and first marketer at Atmos, starting at the Pre-seed stage.
Female-led Fund Is Not The Same As Female-only Effort
Because she is a female GP, men and women alike ask Illig at least once a week if she invests in male CEOs, and they seem surprised when she says yes. Contrary to popular belief, they do not have a diversity quota they’re trying to hit at The Council Fund. “If we set a precedent that every female-led fund has to be a female-only effort, we will ostracize ourselves and be working with less capital for far longer. That is why I’ve always been focused on finding the best founders, period. I have a fiduciary responsibility to return the fund to LPs, and I believe a winning strategy will be investing in all types of founders - including women and men.”
Equally, because of who they are and the diverse community they’ve created, diversity naturally shows up in the companies Illig and her team have funded. Fund I is currently at 50% companies with female CEOs and 60% with non-white founders.
She admits that, overall, it’s become less trendy to be a funder or founder in the current market, no matter who you are. The safer bet would be to stay in the operating world with a stable salary and defined career ladder. But as someone who has extreme conviction in operators’ ability to become founders and in the opportunity for outsized returns residing in legacy industries, her risk appetite is no doubt higher than others.
“I like to see it as an advantage, as fortunes are built in down markets,” concludes Illig.
