Vanessa Dawson

Founder and CEO of the Vinetta Project

Vanessa is the Founder and CEO of the Vinetta Project. She started her career in retail finance and later moved on to private equity in New York at Columbus Nova Technology partners, a global, multi-stage technology investment firm. Following this role, she worked with a leading digital development agency where she structured partnerships and digital strategy for Fortune 500 companies including Hearst, Priceline, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. Vanessa also worked with startups to develop technical requirements for their MVPs as well as product roadmaps. Her clients included Bonobos Curbed, Food 52, Daily Candy and more.

Vanessa launched her own technology venture called Evry in 2010. Evry was a crowdfunding platform for group activities that enabled users to schedule group plans and collect payment more efficiently. This initiative concluded in 2013.

After seeing a major need to support female founders in accessing capital and connections, Vanessa created the Vinetta Project. Vinetta is a high impact ecosystem that accelerates founder’s growth and facilitates access to capital. The organization sources high potential female founders with proven business models and offers them unprecedented access to proprietary online resources, exclusive networks, and capital from vetted investors. Vinetta has become a leading deal flow pipeline for female founded technology ventures and has helped women access over $50 million in funding.

Vanessa has been featured in INC, Business Insider, and CNNMoney’s Upstart 30. She is also a member of the #UN70, a group of 70 global digital leaders nominated to assist the UN in leveraging digital opportunities.