Firm overview
BBG Ventures is a pre-seed and seed-stage fund dedicated solely to investing in women-led businesses, launched by Susan Lyne and Nisha Dua. Susan Lyne was CEO of AOL’s Brand Group, and before that, a veteran executive of Gilt Groupe, Martha Stewart Living, Disney and ABC Entertainment. Nisha Dua oversaw strategy and business operations for the 1,300+ person AOL Brand Group, ran AOL’s millennial entertainment website and launched BUILT BY GIRLS; prior to that she was an M&A lawyer and Bain consultant. Susan and Nisha came together with the goal of putting capital into the hands of underrepresented women founders after seeing firsthand how the traditional venture ecosystem had overlooked and underestimated them. The duo recently launched a third, $50M fund, a more institutional sized round compared to their two prior $10M funds in which AOL Ventures was the sole backer.
Firm strategy
BBG Ventures invests in women-led businesses that are building scalable solutions to the problems that millions of people face—problems that the founder understands first-hand. BBGV leads or co-leads rounds for these female founders and writes checks ranging from $500k to $1M, usually coming out to 7.5% to 10% ownership. Since they launched eight years ago, the duo have made roughly 80 investments, investing in companies like Lola, Zola, Blueland and Spring Health which helped provide them the track record needed to launch their institutional-sized fund. BBG Ventures provides world-class institutional support post-investment by leveraging the impressive networks and operating experience of the two general partners. Susan and Nisha bring a wealth of experience operating and scaling some of the top companies in America, and help their founders with everything from branding and go-to-market strategy to future fundraising. With respect to industry focus areas, they take a generalist approach but have recently been focused on categories that demand reinvention coming out of the pandemic, including health and wellbeing; the future of education and work; climate friendly commerce; overlooked and emerging consumers.
Why we invested
In our first meeting with Nisha and Susan, we were energized by their mission of putting more money in the hands of women and helping them scale their businesses. The mixture of strong mission and demonstrated success was a combination that was immediately compelling for us. Susan and Nisha bring a ton to the table as operators, investors, and people, having seen significant success at brand-name companies in the U.S. The pair are smart and thoughtful about where the world is heading, they understand the psychology of the consumer & the nature of recent societal shifts, and have an eight year track record of capitalizing on these insights to show for it. It’s easy to see why many quality founders have chosen to have BBG on their cap table, and we are excited to join Nisha and Susan as they continue back the best and brightest female-led teams with institutional-level scale.