Women investors can increase funding in Philadelphia: Gloria Rabinowitz

Only 1.5 percent of the country’s venture capital is invested in the Philadelphia region. But Gloria Rabinowitz isn’t worried.

“It’s upside,” she said. “It’s all upside.”

What Rabinowitz, a local angel investor and entrepreneur, means is: there’s an enormous opportunity to raise Philadelphia’s profile as a place for deal flow. She also believes women investors “can make all the difference.”

Along with fellow angel investors Ellen Weber and Katherine O’Neill, Rabinowitz led an event that introduced women to the world of angel investing. The event, hosted by the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs, is the first in a series. The local chapter of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs plans to hold another session on angel investing at its spring conference.

Women now have the wealth and the business know-how to become angel investors, said Rabinowitz, a director at Golden Seeds, a national angel group that invests in women-led companies. She encourages women to join angel groups, such as her own, so they can learn by working with more experienced investors.

A former executive at DuPont, Rabinowitz said she’s committed to investing in the region, though she also invests elsewhere. Her first deal was for Lehigh Valley-based Saladax Biomedical.

Golden Seeds had a Philadelphia chapter from 2009 to 2011 but it shut down because there weren’t enough local investors to sustain a chapter, Rabinowitz said. She credits it to the recession. Now, Philadelphia members of Golden Seeds participate in Golden Seeds’ New York City forums, though the Wallingford, Pa. resident said she’s getting tired of taking the train at 5 a.m. to get there.

So would she ever start another Golden Seeds forum in Philadelphia?

“I’m open to it,” she said, but now now. The economy still has some recovering to do, she said.