Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, June 11th.

Today on Forbes, meet Venture Capital's first woman billionaire.

Venture capitalist Teresa Gao is, quote, smart, opinionated, and the only woman in the room.

This quote is from Heather Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Health Tech startup

Solve and former executive at real estate tech firm Trulia, which Gao backed in 2005.

Gao has also become a woman of many firsts. Born in Indonesia to parents of Chinese descent,

Gao immigrated to the U.S. when she was three.

She later became the first person in her high school to attend Brown University,

the first female partner at Venture Capital Powerhouse, Excel,

and co-founder of one of the first female VC firms in Silicon Valley.

In 2023, she told Forbes, quote,

The American Dream is so central to my personal story. She now has another first to add to her list.

Gao is America's first female billionaire venture capitalist, worth an estimated $1.2 billion.

Much of her fortune stems from her 15-year tenure at Excel, where she was part of the team

that led the firm's lucrative early bet on Facebook, now called Meta.

She now runs A-Crew Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that she co-founded in 2019.

A-Crew raised $700 million in October to invest in data and security, health, and fintech

startups, bringing the firm's assets under management to $1.7 billion, with an emphasis on

diversity, especially through its diversify capital fund.

Women made up just 17% of VC decision makers, that's the partners,

managing directors, and principals, in 2024, per a pitchbook report. The private market data

firm also reported that firms with at least one female co-founder captured around 22% of VC funding

...