How long do I have?
A good way to think about it is as a supply chain. It takes time for it to go from a fundraise, and then you go to your limited partners, which is your investor base. You pitch them a concept—your hypothesis for your fund. Your hypothesis can be pre-seed companies, women-led companies or LGBTQ+ companies. Once you establish that thesis, you allocate that fund and then you reap the rewards. You start exiting those investments. That whole process in Canada can take up to 15 years. It takes a very long time for you to establish that track record.
We have four funds in Canada that are solely focused on women-founded enterprises. Those are all emerging funds. They're all only at their first or second fundraise. It's going to take time for us to see the results—for them to establish that hypothesis and say, “Hello, institutional investor; this is why it makes sense on a market base for you to come and invest in this asset class and particularly in this cohort of enterprises.”
If we reconvene in four years' time or 10 years' time, I do think that those metrics will look very different. Again, taking a step back and looking at the history of our sector, it's really just a decade old. We're making progress. Is it fast enough? Probably not. We would all like to see this happen faster, but it is happening.