The startup, formerly known as EasyRent, provided subletting options in New Zealand and Sydney, before pivoting the business to expand in New York City.

Earlier this year, Kiki announced it would be launching a “girls only” club in the US city in an Instagram post, a decision that received significant backlash.

On Wednesday, Toby Thomas-Smith spoke in an Instagram video posted on Kiki’s account, addressing the situation from last month.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kiki Club (@kikiclub.nyc)

“I have a lot to own and apologise for, since putting out that post four weeks ago,” Thomas-Smith said.

The co-founder first apologised to the people who found the decision “offensive and disrespectful”.

“I was extremely naive referring to Kiki as the first girls club in NYC and for not articulating the true reasons behind this direction,” he said.

When it was first announced, the Kiki co-founders cited the hire of its first female worker as the reason behind the decision, who “enlightened” the all-male founding team on the supposed problem of women meeting women in NYC.

“It was incredibly offensive to all the women founders who’ve been working and researching to improve the safe environments for women to live in,” Thomas-Smith said in his apology.

According to Kiki and Blackbird, the venture capital fund that invested in Kiki, women comprised 70 per cent of Kiki users. Thomas-Smith said it is women who engages with the subletting company the most, which encouraged the group to pursue the “girls only” club.

However, Thomas-Smith said the startup’s time in NYC so far has “lacked the special feeling” and the “strong level of connection in the community” that they had in Sydney.

“We’re still ultimately committed to subletting and our mission of changing how the world lives, but because we’ve been missing the connection piece, this has required our full focus the past few weeks,” he said.

“Again, I’m deeply sorry for how I went about communicating this focus in such a poor way. I won’t make these same mistakes again in the future.”

Blackbird’s response

Venture capital funds have a significant gender problem. In 2023, just four per cent of startup funding went to all-female teams in 2023, with all-male teams continuing to dominate across all deals done.

At the time of Kiki’s announcement, a lot of backlash was directed at Blackbird, Australia’s largest venture capital fund. Blackbird invested a 16 per cent stake in the all-male founded startup when it was based in Sydney and known as EasyRent.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Women's Agenda (@womensagenda)

Many commentators criticised Blackbird’s lack of response since the saga. But four weeks later, General Partner at Blackbird Ventures Samantha Wong released a statement on behalf of the company.

Her statement addressed the criticism surrounding the gender issue in Kiki and in VC funding in general, one Blackbird is “committed to improving”.

“As a former female founder who struggled to raise venture funding for her startup, and as a female general partner who has raised $160M over two separate funds for the New Zealand Blackbird funds that I run, I am empathetic to the challenge of fundraising as a woman,” Wong said.

“I can fully appreciate the frustration at inequity in funding for female founders that I saw in commentary on this story.”

Wong firstly clarified “a few facts” in relation to Kiki’s girls only club.

“Despite what you may have read, Blackbird did not back a women’s club, nor did Kiki ‘fail’ in Sydney,” Wong said. 

“We, along with numerous other investors, invested in Kiki to expand its subletting platform, off the back of its strong traction in Sydney, where it was known as ‘EasyRent’.

“At the time of our investment of 16%, EasyRent had been live in Sydney for 12 months, was essentially bootstrapped and was profitable.”

Kiki then made the “bold and risky” move to expand its business in NYC and “own the subletting category globally”, which Wong said has a “logical basis”.

“Women made up 70% of Kiki users in Sydney, but when they moved to New York, they experienced an imbalance of supply and demand, and didn’t have the ‘community magic’,” Wong said.

“As we all know, startup founders experiment and learn and sometimes adjust as they go. They do not always get everything 100% right. We see it as our role to provide support to them through the learning, shifting, ups and downs of the startup journey. 

“So that’s where our focus has been working with Kiki over the last few weeks.”

In 2022, Blackbird invested in 22 companies; 23 per cent of those companies had at least one woman founder in the founding team.

“While this is broadly in line with industry standards, it’s nowhere near where we want it to be,” Wong said. 

“We are committed to continuing to provide transparent reporting about our progress, acknowledging that we need to do better.”

Blackbird has several programs designed to mentor, coach and develop more women startup founders.

“There is much more work to do, and we’re committed to doing it,” Wong said. “We will continue doing our part to build an ecosystem we can all be proud of.”

The post All-male startup Kiki apologises for girls only club in New York appeared first on Women's Agenda.

According to The Australian Financial Review, Kiki, previously known as EasyRent, raised $US4.5 million ($7 million) and was valued at $US28 million ($42 million) in August 2023. Blackbird Ventures, Australia’s largest venture capital fund, is reported to have a 16 per cent stake in the company.

The pivot was announced by Kiki co-founder Toby Thomas-Smith, who said in a video on Instagram, “We’re not doing subletting anymore. I know it sounds crazy but we’re launching a girls-only club in New York City.”

Recently, the team of five young men at Kiki employed the company’s first and only female employee, 25-year-old Australian, Caitlin Emiko as a “TikTok lead”.

Thomas-Smith described Emiko as “the first girl to join the team” and said she had enlightened him about a problem experienced by “girls” who move to New York City but struggle to connect socially.

“Ever since Caitlin joined the team, she’s really enlightened me to this problem I never even knew existed where so many girls in the city have moved here thinking that they’ll live their best possible life, but they’re just living, not thriving,” Mr Thomas-Smith said in the video on Instagram.

“There’s no central way to overlap. You can’t truly love New York if you don’t have the right people around you. So Caitlin, myself and the team’s new goal is to give you that life you saw in the movie, on Friends and Sex and the City.”

Kiki or EasyRent was first established as a subletting platform in New Zealand before closing down and launching in Sydney. It went on to close down in Australia and then launched in New York City last year. There have been reports of user issues with the subletting platform, as reported by writer Emily Sundberg.

Now, with the company set to launch its “girls only” club, many are questioning why the male-founded company would be dipping their toes into the women’s club space.

As entrepreneur and startup founder Lucy Wark highlighted on LinkedIn on Wednesday, how is it that these young, male founders were given funding for a subletting model that failed in two markets to relaunch in a third market?

And why are they able to pivot to a fresh business idea, a “girls only” club, with “no revenue plan”, as reported by the Australian Financial Review?

“Honestly best of luck to Kiki.nyc and I never want to wish failure on a startup, I know it’s hard. BUT the sheer volume of “things the average female founder could never do, let alone be rewarded for” in this piece is staggering – from flying international in their underwear and being applauded for it, to being given funding to try a model that failed in two other markets in a third market, to pivoting on a dime to a new business with no revenue plan after demonstrating an appalling disrespect for their early users,” Wark wrote on LinkedIn.

As we’ve reported time and again on Women’s Agenda, there is a obscene funding gap for female founders in startups. Just 2 per cent of US$238 billion allocated by VCs in 2022 went to all-female founded teams, according to PitchBook, while in Australia, the figure sits at just 3 per cent.

“I rarely get truly angry about funding imbalances and who gets the ‘benefit of the doubt’ these days because I really prefer to channel my energy into building businesses and doing pragmatic things to improve the situation, but yikes, this one got me,” Wark continued.

“Also – it’s “women”. Not “girls”. If you want to launch a business for us, do us the courtesy of referring to us as not-children.”

The pivot from Kiki comes as the startup sector faces harsher conditions amid economic uncertainty and as female founders continue to face roadblocks in accessing funding and wider discrimination.

And, as entrepreneur Emma Bates raised on Instagram, is it concerning that “an all male team (barring one woman)” is building a social space for girls?”

“While more men/male dominant industries (like tech & VC) do need to recognize the need for these safe spaces for women & girls to connect as HUGE (business) opportunities, building them with a male dominant team with only it seems (weeks?) of knowledge on this space is really alarming to me.”

The post Why have five men started a “girls only” club in New York City? appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Speaking to Tarla Lambert, Schwartz – one of Australia’s most renowned business leaders and investors – said it’s imperative that women are involved in making decisions around the solutions and innovation we need for society to function at its optimum level. 

A key part of this is ensuring that female entrepreneurs can access the capital they need to ensure their businesses can scale and thrive, Schwartz says. 

“Gender equality has been absolutely crucial to me probably since my thirties when I realised that gender equality did not exist,” Schwartz said. 

“I started attending meetings and I was the only woman in the room. I used to ask myself how it was possible because I had been to University studying law with a lot of really bright women through my twenties and then worked for a very short period of time as a lawyer.”

So when it comes to the allocation of venture capital funding, what’s the state of play for women business owners? Well, it’s not great – just 2 percent of female-founded companies in the US per year secure VC funding, and that figure is even lower for Australian-owned ventures.

“I’d been investing in women entrepreneurs – if not financially then also as a mentor – and, I got to a point three or four years ago where I felt that I needed to start supporting the women who actually made the decisions around capital allocation, because there is not enough capital allocated to women,” Schwartz shared on the podcast.

“When you have women who are actually in charge of those capital allocations or investing decisions, more women are invested in and that’s why my strategy pivoted.”

Schwartz decided to start investing in the women who are investors themselves, and started looking around for women who were setting up venture capital funds. Two of the women she found were Marisa Warren and Kate Vale – the co-founders of venture capital fund ALIAVIA, a VC fund that invests exclusively in female tech founders in Australia and the US.

“They’re two Australian women who are based on the west coast of the US and they’re investing in women entrepreneurs in both Australia and the US, which is terrific particularly for the Australian women who potentially see the US as their next growth market,” Schwartz explained. 

ALIAVIA is backed by well known Australian LPs, including Schwartz, Tattarang, Robyn & Victoria Denholm, Dom Pym and Cynthia Scott. It’s already invested in some impressive Australian startups including Eugene, Loupe, HowToo and Othelia AI. 

“Women running businesses is not is not completely normalised in our society which is a real shame because we have a lot of fabulous women entrepreneurs,” Schwartz said. 

“Unfortunately I think it’s also particularly the case for young women. There’s unconscious bias that happens around looking ‘too young to be running a business like that’ and ‘how come you’re not married and looking after children’.”

Schwartz said she is currently witnessing many women from her own generation who are starting to put themselves out there as advocates for younger women entreprenuers.

“My peers and I see ourselves as not having achieved as much for your generation of women as we would have liked to have achieved,” she said. “And so we I think are really putting ourselves out there to make sure that we can create at this stage of our lives as much change for future generations of women as we possibly can.”

And Schwartz’s advice to women entrepreneurs looking to nail their pitch?

“When women pitch they need to be their authentic selves and they need to focus on the things that are important and significant that are going to make their businesses successful,” she said.

“Women tend to not be as aggressive in the way they pitch their businesses, and that may not appeal to male investors because it might be mistaken for not being ambitious enough.

“But I don’t think it is, I think women are fantastic entrepreneurs, they just need to be given the opportunity to pitch their businesses to a panel of investors that know how to investigate the opportunity.”

The post Carol Schwartz’s investment ‘strategy pivot’ toward women-owned VC funds appeared first on Women's Agenda.

We’d both known him since we were kids. His name was Tom, a business consultant in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs who loved to talk about his corporate travel and numerous divorces.

Bailing on in, Tom’s arm was quickly slung across my brother’s shoulders as he proceeded to ask him about his work.

My brother, who runs a successful public affairs business, filled in the gaps. They spoke jovially together until Tom, about 20 minutes later, turned to me and asked: “So what are you doing?”

I answered: “I co run a small, independent media company. Our main site is called ‘Women’s Agenda’.

“Women’s A-gender?”, Tom instantly responded. Sarcasm dripping from his voice as he chuckled at his own supposed brilliance. I could tell instantly that he had no interest in actually hearing about my business; the news we cover daily nor the near one-million women that engage with us each month.

And my initial response was to laugh it off. To pretend that Tom had cracked an absolute winner that deserved validation.

But instead, I furrowed my brow and snorted. “Yep, you got me” I said, before walking away.

The incident didn’t leave me rattled but it did leave me seething.

I knew that my brother could have told Tom he was licking paint for a living and he would have been impressed. But there I was, a 32-year-old entrepreneur with two small kids, a media company bootstrapped and thriving, made to feel as small as a thumbtack.

This is a common experience for female entrepreneurs. Despite women accounting for around one third of Australia’s small business owners, and the number of female small business owners increasing by 24 per cent between 2006 and 2021, more than three times the growth of men, the social perception of women in business has a long way to go.

So many friends of mine running businesses cite similar frustrations about being dismissed, and there are complex, systemic barriers at play.

No matter the earning potential or scaleability of a woman’s business, there’s still a long-held social and cultural expectation that women “do it all”. Yes, you can run your business, but make sure you do it in between school drop offs, preparing dinner and maintaining all the household life-admin and mental load. Make sure you do it in between supporting your husband’s more important aspirations, and never drop the ball because no one will be there to pick it up.

Yes, the tide is slowly turning, and there are families running in more egalitarian ways, but GEEZ, the road is long.

My friend runs a successful make-up business on the northern rivers. She manages everything from weddings to festivals to celebrity photoshoots. She also has three boys under the age of 10. Her husband, a builder, works away. Lisa works on weekends– still making excellent money in small windows.

Last week, we had lunch together. Lisa, my successful, exceptional friend, said quietly: “Whenever anyone asks me about my business, they refer to it as ‘little’. ‘How’s your little makeup business going'”.

Her little make-up business for the record, is booming. Her talent supports her family, and enables her to be there for her sons. She’s making a full-time salary on weekend hours.

Women-owned ventures are too often relegated to the space of “side hustle”. There’s a persistent thought that women run businesses only to attain flexibility– so they can juggle busy home-lives and high-flying husbands.

It’s a sad trope that explains a lot about the obscene gap in VC funding handed to women founders– currently sitting at about 2% annually. Women are missing out on critical opportunities for investment and to scale. And Australia’s missing out as a result.

If we want to see that trend shift? I’d suggest we start taking women-owned ventures seriously.

The post Female entrepreneurs are missing out on critical funding and opportunities to scale. It’s because we’re often perceived as “side hustlers”. appeared first on Women's Agenda.