Accelerating Angels Investment Firm Aims to Elevate Women-Owned Businesses in Columbus

When Cindi Englefield was in high school and college in the 1970s, she spent her summers working in the office at her father’s company, which dealt in fuel and lubricant products and Duchess convenience stores. She immediately caught the “business bug” as she learned about accounts payable and receivable, the ins and outs of buying and selling products and tracking how many gallons of fuel were sold each day.

At the time, her two brothers were being groomed to take positions inside the business, Englefield Oil Co. After graduating from Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing in 1979, it was expected Englefield would get married and have children.

“Instead of my dad offering to bring me into the company, he encouraged me to follow my husband. Those were the times,” Englefield says. “Sometimes people would say how horrible it was that I wasn’t given an opportunity to go into the family business, but it wasn’t like that. I had a ton of respect for my dad and brothers—we have always been a close family. I followed the path my heart was telling me to take.”

In 1980, Englefield moved to Cleveland with her husband. He started a State Farm insurance agency while she worked as an assistant buyer and area store manager for Carlisle’s Department Store. Once she had children, she became a stay-at-home mom while working part time to help grow the insurance business. By 1989, she was divorced and decided to move back to Columbus. She still had the itch to be in business.

“[My dad] said, ‘Whatever business you want to start on your own, I’ll support you,’ ” she says. “I decided to start my own publishing company from my dining room table. My brothers joined my board, and my dad wrote my first $5,000 investment check.”

In hindsight, Englefield feels fortunate she was able to do something her father did—build a business on her own. Launched in 1991, Show What You Know Publishing became a $3 million company with 25 employees before it was sold in 2011.

“It was a great 20-year ride,” Englefield says. “I loved having the opportunity to be in charge of my own business, and my brothers commented about how proud they were of me for doing something they never had the opportunity to do: start something from scratch. My dad, at one point, did say, ‘Cindy, you could have run Englefield Oil.’ I said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’ So, I did get the recognition.”

Englefield has been an Englefield Oil board member since 1994.

Fueling Female Founders

Two years after selling the publishing business, Englefield started Englefield Business Advisors LLC to help entrepreneurs grow their firms. That was the same year Mary McCarthy and Caroline Worley co-founded the Women’s Small Business Accelerator in Dublin to provide education, peer support, mentoring and accountability to help women on their entrepreneurial journey. McCarthy invited Englefield to coffee and asked her to join the board. A couple months later, Englefield also became a member of local investor group X-Squared Angels, which is no longer active.

The period that followed gave Englefield and McCarthy vast exposure to women entrepreneurs—and also the funding gap they were challenged by. In 2022, according to Pitchbook, companies founded solely by women took in just 2 percent of venture capital funding in the U.S. A big part of the problem, reports show, is that less than 5 percent of VC partners—the investing decision-makers—are women.

During the pandemic, Englefield and McCarthy came up with an idea to help close the funding gap. Launched in 2022, Dublin-based Accelerating Angels has a mission to invest in early-stage, high-growth and “exceptionally run” women-owned businesses with a technology component that solves a long-term problem (one that will last 20-plus years). Like other angel investors, the firm—currently raising its first funding round—will provide initial seed capital to get companies off the ground.

“We want to make sure women have access to capital to grow and scale so they can get to the point where they are ready to be venture backed,” Englefield says. “Investing in women founders can make a positive change in the world. I can’t think of a better way to make a direct impact with dollars than to put it into a life-saving medical device company startup led by a woman.”

An analysis of 10 years of investment data by First Round Capital found that companies with at least one female founder performed 63 percent better than investments in all-male founding teams.

Doing Good and Doing Well

Englefield’s focus at Accelerating Angels is fundraising and working with investors. McCarthy’s role is to coach and support founders, preparing them for investor pitch meetings and following deals from application to exit.

The goal for the firm’s first fund is $3 million; $1 million had been raised by early August. Investments, which could start before the end of this year, will average about $100,000.

Beginning in October, Accelerating Angels will host monthly hybrid investor meetings for networking and to hear pitches from two to three startups. Investors will be encouraged to ask questions of the founders and participate in due diligence—a more realistic version of Shark Tank, if you will.

Englefield and McCarthy cite the need to grow the number of local angel investors to create a healthy ecosystem, so Accelerating Angels will also host educational and networking events to introduce angel investing to more people. Diversity among investors also is encouraged so Accelerating Angels’ portfolio companies reflect that same diversity.

The firm also plans to support women founders with educational programming before an investment and mentors and advisers afterward.

That concept was attractive to Columbus sales strategist and board director Amy Franko, one of the first investors. She plans to take an active role by advising founders about sales strategy, and will speak about board service and governance using her experience as immediate past chair of the board of directors for Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland, which included helming a $16 million capital campaign.

“I was very much attracted to the idea of being able to dig in on due diligence and advisory work for the founder and executive team,” Franko says. “The connectivity we can build with women-owned enterprises specifically is an underpinning of Accelerating Angels that will create results perhaps with a different approach than traditional funds.”

Angel investing also has a ripple effect, Franko says. An investment increases the odds a business will be successful. Many benefit from that success: the founder, the employees, the customers and the community. The return on that investment allows investors to put money into other promising businesses, she says. “Creating success beyond myself is what attracted me to this.”

Accelerating Angels also has a team of advisers, including former Procter & Gamble innovation executive and angel investor Sue Bevan Baggott. She believes it’s important to get more women to understand how investment dollars can accelerate change.

“As women, we are socialized to believe that the only way to give back is by donating to charity,” she says. “While that’s great, those dollars represent only 1 percent of the value of the U.S. stock market. So, if we don’t start looking at women-led for-profit companies that are coming up with life-improving innovations, we’re going to be waiting a long time.

“Investing in an early-stage fund like Accelerating Angels is a great way to diversify an overall portfolio by adding investments in private markets, which gives an investor a chance for outsized returns,” Baggott says. “It’s proven—investing in women founders provides great returns and allows investors to do good and do well.”

As for McCarthy, who also is the owner of YMT Consulting, Accelerating Angels is a continuation of her longtime mission to help grow women’s financial futures. “By investing in them, we can help women create generational wealth by building a business that is monetized that will support them. A majority of businesses don’t break $100,000 [in revenue], let alone break $1 million. There are incredible women in Central Ohio who have broken that $1 million mark. Cindi and I see a great opportunity to help more women accomplish that [milestone].”

Laura Newpoff is a freelance writer.

This story is from the Fall 2023 issue of Columbus CEO.