POV: Your Favorite Creator Is Also Your Co-Investor (Aug '26)
Note from the Founders 👋
The Girl Math of Alternatives: From Get Ready with Me to Get Rich with Me 💄💸
Deal Spotlight: The American Baby Company 👶
Investor Resource: How to Start Thinking Like a Capital Allocator ✏️
Media & Press: Should I Hand My Finances Off to AI? 🧐
What's Coming Up: It’s Almost PSL Szn 🍂
Closing Note 💌
Note from the Founders 👋
GM ☕ from Serena, Porter, and Emma, the co-founders of Girl Math Capital! This month's newsletter comes to you a little bit ~sun-kissed~ and perhaps a bit jet-lagged (kidding, thank god we didn’t take the West Coast → East Coast red eye, or Emma’s perfectly curated sleep schedule would be toast). But yes, you heard that right - we spent last week racking up airline points Girl Math-style: hitting Austin, San Francisco, and LA to meet members in person. From dinners and picnics to co-working days and a panel discussion, it hit different being able to spend time with the women who make up this community in all different cities, instead of just seeing their names and faces on Slack and Google Meet.
We also kicked off Cohort 4 on August 3rd - our biggest group yet - so between the travel and the new cohort, it's been a full-speed kind of month. Summer slump? Never heard of her. But actually, as this is our last newsletter of the summer season, we hope you get to find time to wind down and enjoy some PTO with family and friends. You’ve earned it.
Happy reading! 💸
The Girl Math of Alternatives: Your FYP Just Became a Pitch Deck 💄💸
Read time: ~8 min
This week, Alix Earle announced she's taking a stake in Cymbiotika, the liposomal supplement brand she's been using every day for years. On its own, we love Alix for this: a creator putting her money into a brand she uses, supports, and lives in versus one she was paid to pretend to love. And in case you’re not chronically online, Alix has more than 14 million combined followers across TikTok and Instagram and an upcoming Netflix reality series, Earle Meets World, so for brands where her audience is the core consumer, she can literally change their trajectory. This is far from the first time she's done it: beyond Cymbiotika, her portfolio now includes the ready-to-drink margarita SipMargs, the clean energy drink Gorgie, and her own skincare line, Reale Actives. At what point does "an influencer who invests sometimes" become "an investor who happens to have 14 million followers"?
If there's one starting point for creator investing, it's Poppi. Back in May 2024, instead of taking a standard brand-deal check, Alix negotiated equity in the prebiotic soda brand. She talked about the brand constantly, starred in a Super Bowl commercial, spearheaded major brand activations like the Poppi Coachella house, and even released a personalized pink Raspberry Rose flavored can featuring her own hand-drawn polka dots and high-heel motifs. Less than a year later, in March 2025, PepsiCo agreed to acquire Poppi for nearly $2 billion. The scale of that exit and how close it happened after her investment had everyone talking. It’s also one of the biggest reasons the last 18 months of angel investing have looked the way they have.
Once that reference point existed, people started noticing the wider wave swelling around it, and the infrastructure built up fast. Take Bulletpitch, founded by Brett Perlmutter in 2022 as a scrappy newsletter out of his Middlebury dorm room, profiling early-stage startups in digestible, bullet-point form. By 2024, podcaster Felix Levine had joined as managing partner (notably also Serena Kerrigan’s partner), and the two launched Bulletpitch's now-flagship dinner series, seating founders and creators around the same table so founders can pitch directly, and creators who resonate can join the syndicate to invest. What started as a media company covering deal flow from the outside is now, in Perlmutter's own words, "the beginning of a venture fund." Sauce brand Sauz, Bulletpitch's first food investment, raised from a room of roughly 20 creators with a combined tens of millions of followers between them. A cap table that might once have gone entirely to an institutional seed fund now has room for angels with an audience, and for a direct-to-consumer brand like a sauce or a soda, that audience can move the needle on sales in a way traditional fund capital typically can’t.
Cherub is formalizing the creator side of that trend in its own way. Founded in 2023 by Jaclyn Johnson (of Create & Cultivate) and Angeline Vuong, Cherub bills itself as the "dating app for angel investing," matching founders who need capital with angels actively looking for deal flow, creators very much included. The platform's directory already reads like a who's-who of creator-investors: Megababe founder Katie Sturino, Nasty Gal's Sophia Amoruso, and Hannah Bronfman of Conteur Capital, who's logged more than 70 investments herself. This year, Cherub took it a step further and launched a dedicated Creator Angel Summit, naming creator and August co-founder Nadya Okamoto, who has more than 4 million followers on TikTok, as its Chief Creator Officer. As Jaclyn put it, "creators are the front row" now, "the new necessity." This is a structural bet that creator angels are creating their own category now, with their own pipeline, community, and seats at the table.
Underneath the headlines and the infrastructure is the social layer. Lilly Sisto, for example, posted a reel about making her fourth angel investment and how rewarding the process has been. Morgan Riddle, lifestyle creator and former tennis WAG, also shared her interest in investing in a women’s sports team on her recent podcast with Maggie Sellers Reum of Hot Smart Rich. "I invested in this" has become its own content genre at this point, doing for cap tables what unboxing videos did for product drops, except instead of a discount code at the end, the audience gets an invitation to think of themselves as investors too.
Here's the part that doesn't make it into the highlight reel.
A creator-stacked cap table fits into a pitch deck beautifully, but it doesn't automatically qualify as a good investment. We covered this on our socials a few weeks ago: Phia, the AI shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, raised roughly $40 million from a roster that read less like a cap table and more like a red carpet, with more than 30 celebrities and influencers investing alongside institutional names like Kleiner Perkins, Notable Capital, and Khosla Ventures. Then Bloomberg reported Phia had been "cookie stuffing," claiming affiliate commissions on sales it never actually drove, and that the founders reportedly knew for months before it became public.
We're not saying any individual celebrity investor should have caught that in diligence, but more as a warning flag that a famous name on the cap table tells you the company was good at building a moment, not necessarily what's under the hood. Celebrities and creators are taking bets just like the rest of us. The wattage of the round doesn't necessarily change the odds of success, but it definitely impacts how loudly it gets covered when the bet goes wrong.
So where does that leave you, whether you're a creator or a normie like us?
If you're the one making the bet:
Size it like a bet, not a brand deal. Going all-in on one company you love is a fundamentally different risk profile than making smaller checks across ten. "I believe in this founder" and "I put my eggs in one basket because I already post about it" can feel identical in the moment and still be two very different decisions.
Know what you're being offered, and don't assume a big name in the round means someone already checked. Equity, a SAFE, a revenue share, and an advisory fee that just gets called "investing" for optics are four very different instruments. And a star-studded cap table is a marketing asset for the company, not a diligence report for you.
Pitch your worth beyond the check. As an angel investor, your goal is to offer a founder not just money, but strategic value. That could be a massive following, but it definitely doesn't have to be; it could be years of experience in a certain industry, connections in a space, or something else entirely. Do some soul searching before you're in the room, so the founder wants to say yes to you, regardless of your check size.
Lastly, educate yourself. Whether you are a creator or not, Girl Math Capital is open to women from all backgrounds who want to get into angel investing or other alternatives. We'll help you figure out what deal is right for you.
Deal Spotlight: The American Baby Company 👶
ICYMI: Each month, we'll share a few of the deals our community has backed, not to give investment advice, but to show you the breadth of opportunities Girl Math members are exploring and spotlight some epic founders.
Serena here!👋 This month's deal spotlight hits particularly close to home, and that’s because I’ve actually known the founder since the ripe age of 10 - we went to middle school together! Van Spina is now the co-founder and CEO of The American Baby Company (ABC), one of Girl Math’s newest portfolio companies.
Van is the proud product of IVF himself, but it wasn't until he and his fiancée went through multiple IVF cycles themselves that he realized just how expensive and inaccessible the process had become. The average IVF cycle in the U.S. costs around $23,500, and because many families need more than one cycle, the true cost can approach $50,000.
Instead of accepting that price tag as a given, Van started asking a pretty simple question: why does IVF cost so much in the first place?
That's the question that led him to start ABC. Rather than reinventing the science of IVF, the company is rethinking the operating model around it, using a reshaped clinical team, AI-assisted intake, standardized treatment pathways, and more efficient lab and administrative workflows to cut out many of the costs built into fertility care today.
Van, a former technology investor at Warburg Pincus, partnered with reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Paul Magarelli to build the model. ABC's first clinic plans to offer a complete IVF cycle, including medications, for $8,995, compared with an average cost of $23,500 today.
ABC recently raised a $4 million seed round co-led by Wormhole Capital and Tower Research Ventures, with Girl Math members also participating. The funding will help launch its first clinic in West Palm Beach later this year, but the vision is much bigger: Van's 10-year goal is to help 250,000 families a year access fertility care.
For GMC member Kaitlyn Smith, the investment was an opportunity to back a company tackling a massive unmet need in women’s health. Fertility has historically been underfunded and underserved, while care remains prohibitively expensive and inaccessible for too many families. She was particularly excited by ABC’s approach to rethinking the model from the ground up to make high-quality care more affordable and accessible.
GMC member Annika Sohlstrom was similarly drawn to ABC’s mission of making fertility care more affordable and convenient, but what especially stood out to her was the way the company is tackling the problem from the provider side. By rethinking how clinicians are trained and how care is delivered, ABC has the potential to expand access without simply layering technology onto the existing model.
We're obviously biased toward businesses that make something historically gatekept more accessible, and it's hard to think of a better example than helping more people afford the opportunity to start a family. We're excited to have GMC members on the cap table and will be cheering on Van and the ABC team as they continue to build this much needed solution. 👶
Investor Resource: How to Start Thinking Like a Capital Allocator ✏️
Earlier this month in San Francisco, we hosted a panel discussion in with Helen Min, Breana Teubner, and Claudia Laurie to talk about a question that is basically at the center of why we started Girl Math Capital: how do more women actually become capital allocators?
All three of them have taken very different paths to investing. After a 15+ year operating career across fashion, retail, gaming, and consumer tech, Breana, now co-founder and COO of TYB, began allocating her own capital as an LP in two early-stage venture funds. Claudia co-founded and sold commerce infrastructure company Prive, returned to operating at Uber, and has since expanded into personally investing in companies she has connected with through her podcast, The Room. After a career spanning senior operating roles at high-growth technology companies, including CMO of AngelList and Plaid, Helen crossed over into venture as a Venture Partner at True Ventures and co-founder of Articulate.
All three of these women have had extremely successful careers already, but notably, there isn't one career move that suddenly made them feel ready to become an investor. For a lot of women, it happens much more gradually: someone sends you a company, you realize you know an industry well enough to have an opinion, a friend asks if you want to LP in a fund, and eventually, you write the check.
1. Before you start investing, figure out if now is the right time for you.
Angel investing is having a moment right now (see section above, lol). We obviously love seeing more women participate, but just because everyone around you seems to be writing checks doesn't mean you need to (or should) start writing them too.
Helen didn't make her first angel investment until she was well into her career. She didn't grow up wealthy, and her earlier financial priorities were pretty straightforward: pay off her student loans, buy a house, and create a sense of financial security. It wasn't until those boxes were checked that she felt comfortable taking on more risk.
Breana made a similar calculation for a completely different reason. Once she became a startup founder, she realized she was already making a pretty massive bet on startup equity through her own company. She didn't necessarily want the rest of her portfolio taking the same type of risk, so she chose funds over individual angel investments.
The point is, investing is personal. Before deciding what everyone else seems to be investing in, look at your current risk profile, the goals you're working toward, and what you can afford to lose. And do it proactively: as Helen put it, “decide on your investing process before the deal is sitting in front of you.”
2. There isn't one “right” way to start allocating capital.
We sometimes talk about angel investing as though it's synonymous with private-market investing, but the panel was a good reminder that there are lots of ways in.
Helen started angel investing after founders began approaching her for her operating expertise, later experimented with syndicates, became an LP, and eventually launched a fund. Breana has never really been an angel investor and instead chose to become an LP in three funds. Claudia's path came through the founder community she built while running her own startup, where suddenly the people raising rounds weren't abstract founders somewhere in Silicon Valley, but rather her friends.
No one pathway looks the same.
3. If you don't feel confident yet, that's... pretty normal.
One of our favorite parts of the conversation was how candid everyone was about their first reaction to being asked to invest: essentially, wait, me?
Breana was running a global apparel innovation center at Gap when two women raising a sustainability-focused fashion fund asked her to become an LP, and she still wondered why they wanted her money. Claudia had the same reaction when founder friends started asking her to angel invest in their companies.
Something we talked about on the panel is that women often treat confidence as a prerequisite to action, when in reality, action is what creates confidence. That doesn't mean blindly writing a check you aren't ready to write. It means taking the next action available to you. Ask how capital calls work. Sit in on a diligence conversation. Advise a startup. Evaluate a deal even if you don't invest. Make a small investment when you're financially ready.
You don't need to eliminate the fear before you start. As Breana put it, sometimes “the fear is the catalyst.” Get curious about what you don't know, and start getting reps.
Our biggest takeaway? Becoming a capital allocator means getting intentional enough about your own finances, risk tolerance, expertise, and goals that you can decide what you want to own, and when you're ready to own it.
Media & Press: Should I Hand Off My Finances to AI? 🧐
This past month, we tackled a question a lot of young investors ask themselves at one point or another: should I pay for a financial advisor, or just manage my own investments with AI and a Robinhood account? We shared our take with Frich, a mobile app and social finance platform helping Gen Z take control of their money, as part of one of their deep dives. Read the full article here - we break down exactly what should factor into that decision, so you can make the call for yourself.
What's Coming Up: It’s Almost PSL Szn 🍂
Summer’s winding down, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Starbucks decided to roll out its pumpkin spice lattes (better known as “PSL”) literally next week. Honestly though, we’re just as excited for fall, because we have some fun events we’re cooking up as we speak.
First up, we're officially welcoming Cohort 4 IRL with kickoff events across our core cities this fall. These are members-only and designed to get our newest cohort off Slack and into the same room with the broader GMC community. Members: keep an eye on our Girl Math calendars for events in your city! More details coming soon.
And there's plenty more in the works. On September 10th, we're hosting an NYC screening of Show Her the Money, the award-winning documentary following women changing the landscape of venture capital and investing in female founders. The Luma goes live Monday!
Rounding it out is an industry night with Myca Collective and Pop Up Grocer, a GMC padel night, and plenty more opportunities to learn, invest, and hang out with women in the community. Keep an eye out and follow our Instagram and LinkedIn for more details soon! 👀
Closing Note 💌
Girl Math Capital was born from the frustration that deals were shared in some circles and not in others. This newsletter is one more way to make sure those conversations and opportunities reach more people, and in particular, more women. If you know someone who'd love this newsletter, pass it along. We believe alternative investing isn't just for finance and tech bros - it's for women who want to get smart, build community, and create generational wealth. See you next month 💸💅
The Girl Math Team
If this got you curious, submit your information to join our next cohort, or apply to be a community member here.
