Theresia Gouw
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Acrew Capital
Accel’s first woman partner, later the first self-made woman billionaire in venture capital.
Theresia Gouw spent 15 years at Accel Partners, becoming the firm’s first woman partner and managing partner, and led investments including Trulia and Imperva through to IPO or acquisition.
In 2014 she co-founded Aspect Ventures with Jennifer Fonstad; in 2019 she launched Acrew Capital, an early-stage fund with a mandate for diverse cap tables across fintech, security and infrastructure. A $700M raise took the firm’s assets under management to roughly $1.7B.
In 2025 Forbes identified Gouw as the first self-made woman billionaire in venture capital — a milestone reached through carried interest on a portfolio built over three decades, rather than by founding an operating company.
How she invests
Alongside its main vehicles Acrew runs a Diversify Capital Fund, taking growth-stage positions of roughly $5M to $15M with the specific purpose of bringing women and underrepresented limited partners onto the cap tables of late-stage technology companies. That is a structural intervention rather than a sourcing preference: it changes who owns a company, not merely which founders get funded.
What an individual investor can take from it
Almost every diversity effort in venture operates on the founder side of the table. This one operates on the ownership side, which is the less visible half and the half where wealth actually accrues. The same question scales down to an individual: whether to spend your effort trying to change who gets funded, or to concentrate on getting onto cap tables yourself. The second is usually more achievable, it compounds, and over a long enough period it does more to change who the capital belongs to.
Where the lesson stops
Getting onto late-stage cap tables is not straightforwardly available. Growth-round allocations of $5M to $15M are institutional positions, and the individual equivalent — funds, syndicates, or employee equity — comes with lock-ups, fees or a job attached. The principle that ownership is where wealth accrues is sound; the routes to it at individual scale are narrower than the fund-level version makes them sound.
Accel’s first-ever woman partner, and venture capital’s first self-made woman billionaire.
Sources
Facts here reflect public reporting at time of writing — roles and fund affiliations change; verify current details directly with Acrew Capital.