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For Investors

Become a member

The Hermesa story

Hermesa began with a table — “mesa” is table in Spanish — and the conviction that
more women needed a seat as both founders and early stage investors

Become a member

Pitch to us

“We are going to need a much bigger table…”

In early 2020, Marla Shapiro — tired of being the only woman in the room — invited 5 women to dinner and asked: “Shall we invest together?” From those 5 we have grown to 300+ women and aligned men – and we’re still adding seats!

Our diversity is an investing edge

We are more entrepreneurial and more diverse than most angel syndicates. Coming from 78 different countries, what unites us is the mission to back underestimated founders and a culture where everyone learns and contributes.

90%

women

66%

operators

30%

ethnically diverse

60%

first-time angels

Why we invest in women

Women founders are systemically underfunded. This is a structural not a performance gap.

70% of unicorns have an “underdog” founder (= a woman, ethnically divese or immigrant), yet only 21% of female and immigrant founders have raised from a top 10 VC (Defiance Capital, 2024).

These are exactly the founders Hermesa backs:

100% of our portfolio companies are women founded or co-founded

66% are immigrant-founded. Gender is our first lens, not our only one.

Founders who had a tougher path solve problems in unique ways and arrive with the necessary grit to build a successful company.

In Europe, women-founded companies have grown 6.5x in value over 5 years against a market average of 5.5x, and move from seed to Series A faster (Dealroom & EIT, 2023).

The pattern holds for investors too: European VC teams led mostly by women deliver IRRs 9.3 percentage points above men-only teams, with lower volatility (European Women in VC, 2023).

That mismatch is our opportunity.

A group of diverse women representing Profit and purpose

Profit and purpose

We invest for returns first. For many members the deeper reward is the mission: getting capital to the women founders the market overlooks.

Meet our award-winning team

Marling Shapiro Founder & Managing Partner of Hermesa

Marla Shapiro

Founder & Managing Partner

30+angel rounds

UKBAA Diversity Champion, 2023

Commercial leadership in three European media-tech start-ups; before that, structured finance at JPMorgan.

Wibke Stoffers

Partner & CMO

35+ angel rounds

UKBAA Best Women-Led Investment in Innovation, 2024

Fractional start-up CMO/CCO; before that built and scaled challenger brands at Pfizer, Edgewell and Henkel

Emma Blackburn, CFA

Partner & CFO

65+ angel rounds

UKBAA Angel Investor of the Year, 2026

Venture Partner and former CFO, Ascension Ventures; before that, finance leadership at Siebel and audit/M&A at EY

Meet Our Members

"
Hermesa puts real capital and real conviction behind women-founded businesses that still receive a fraction of the funding out there. The deal pipeline is genuinely strong and spread across a diverse set of industries, so I'm always learning. And the women I meet, the founders and fellow investors, bring connections and opportunities I wouldn't find anywhere else.
"
Julia Fintz
Co-Managing Director FinTech, 2 x Exited Founder
"
I'd wanted to get into angel investing for a while, but there's so much noise out there, and doing it properly on your own takes a lot of time. Hermesa removes that barrier with a process you can trust, and you get to learn from the community along the way.
"
Aïda Aït-Ahmed
Co-founder and COO Nextoria, global VC backed M&A advisory

"
Hermesa puts real capital and real conviction behind women-founded businesses that still receive a fraction of the funding out there. The deal pipeline is genuinely strong and spread across a diverse set of industries, so I'm always learning. And the women I meet, the founders and fellow investors, bring connections and opportunities I wouldn't find anywhere else.
"
Julia Fintz
Co-Managing Director FinTech, 2 x Exited Founder
"
I'd wanted to get into angel investing for a while, but there's so much noise out there, and doing it properly on your own takes a lot of time. Hermesa removes that barrier with a process you can trust, and you get to learn from the community along the way.
"
Aïda Aït-Ahmed
Co-founder and COO Nextoria, global VC backed M&A advisory