“I’m a 17-year-old girl at heart,” says 36-year-old Armidale-born Nisha Dua, co-founder of BBG Ventures, a New York-based seed stage venture capital fund that invests in women-led consumer tech startups. “I’ve always been obsessed with the “new new” – the latest brands, products and technology. I’m that person who needs to get their hands on the newest thing.” Incidentally, she wields a mean roundhouse kick (she has a black belt in Karate) and has a penchant for singing. Dua who has always loved to lead and have a seat at the table recently returned home to share her knowledge with Australia’s future VC’s as a guest lecturer at VC Catalyst. “I’ve always wanted to be in the room where it happened. Like in the Hamilton song,” she says warmly. “But it took me a long time to realise that my personal passions could – and would – be the catalyst to get me into those rooms.”

Dua started BBG Ventures in 2014 with her former boss at AOL Susan Lyne to capitalize on the new wave of female founders and female consumers emerging as transformational agents in the world, both politically and socially. Women make or influence 85 per cent of consumer purchases and women are also the power users of most major mobile, social and other online platforms, according to Dua. Twenty per cent more women than men use Facebook and WhatsApp; 30 per cent more are on Instagram; 35 per cent more are on Snapchat. Women also spend 31 per cent more minutes on their mobile phone a day, 28 per cent more time mobile shopping, and 31 per cent more time in mobile gaming apps. “Despite these figures, female-founded startups in the US received 2.2 per cent of venture dollars in 2018 and mixed gender teams just 12 per cent,” says Dua. “We want to change that.”