Founding partners of Scale investors, Samar Mcheileh, Roo Harris, Chelsea Newell.

“Sometimes I think we need to describe the opportunity as ‘Australia’s next gold rush’, because that’s what it is,” says Roo Harris, Founding Partner at Scale Investors, Australia’s first women-led venture capital fund.

Founded in 2013 by Susan Oliver AM, Carol Schwartz AO, Annette Kimmitt AM and Laura McKenzie, the goal of Scale Investors was to close the entrepreneurial investment gender gap. Scale’s current owners and partners since 2023, Samar Mcheileh, Roo Harris and Chelsea Newell, have set their sights not only on addressing the gender investment gap, but closing the gender innovation gap too.

“The opportunity is huge and it’s here right now,” says Samar Mcheileh, Founding Partner.

“Women-led and diverse teams outperform across investment classes. In venture, women return 35 per cent ROI. Their cumulative revenues are 10 per cent more. They tend to exit quicker, and they’re incredibly capital efficient.

“And yet despite all of this, just two to four per cent of venture capital goes to women globally, and not much more to mixed teams. Even if you do raise capital as a mixed team or a women-led team, you’re getting three to four times less than the equivalent male-only team.”

Determined to create more impact by transitioning Scale Investors to a funds business, in 2025 the trio launched the Scale Venture Fund 1, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-led startups across Australia and New Zealand. It raised $35 million in their first close in December 2025, with cornerstone investments from the Minderoo Strategic Impact Fund; the family of the late Australian fashion designer and businesswoman, Carla Zampatti AC; and Innovation Victoria.

“Scale has always been in the service of founders and being very human-centered and different in our approach in terms of how we invest,” Samar explains.

“As women, we do business differently, and that’s meant we’ve always worked in advocacy and education because venture capital and angel investing are such opaque spaces.”

Citing women’s lived experience as a core advantage in identifying opportunities that are largely unaddressed, particularly across the female economy, Roo points to research from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey Health Institute, which estimates that closing the women’s health gap could add at least $1 trillion to the global economy annually by 2040.

“It’s an enormous investment opportunity for strong returns plus impact,” Roo says. “We’re now in an incredibly privileged position to fund this next generation of extraordinary women founders who are coming through.”

Raising the visibility of these opportunities is a key part of Scale Investors’ work, but often the most immediate barrier to narrowing the gender investment and gender innovation gaps comes down to who’s in the room.

“Most investment decision makers just don’t look like us,” Samar explains. “If you’re talking about fund managers, only 14 – 18 per cent are women, depending on which sector you’re in. And venture capital has the lowest number.”

A 2017 study from Columbia University revealed a pronounced gender bias in how early-stage investment opportunities are interrogated based on the gender of the entrepreneur. Male founders are asked ‘promotion’ questions that focus on gains and growth, while female founders are asked ‘prevention’ questions focused on safety and risk mitigation.

“This means women founders have to do more work, more preparation and have more conversations to find those partners who believe in your story and understand it inherently,” Samar says.

“Women are the global majority, yet we continue to hear women’s health described as a ‘niche’ problem in some of these boardrooms. A woman dies every 7 minutes from post-partum hemorrhage. This is not a ‘women’s problem’. Everyone is born.

“The intergenerational transfer of wealth is underway and things are certainly moving, but not to the extent it could be, because there are many generational gatekeepers when it comes to allocation of capital. The next-gen love what we’re doing – but often they are not yet responsible for the investment decision making. If we’re really going to change, we need to see a change in who allocates capital.”

Correcting a market failure

Alex Schuman, CEO of Carla Zampatti Pty. Limited, says the decision to back Scale Investors is a natural extension of his iconic mother’s life’s work.

“Mum’s life mission was the empowerment of women, particularly in business,” he says. “She won the very first Australian Businesswoman of the Year Award in 1980 and spent the rest of her life championing women in business.

“She was one of the 14 founders of Chief Executive Women 40 years ago, and in all honesty, she would say an organisation was only run well when it was run by a woman. And it wasn’t that she wanted a woman on every board, she wanted only women on every board.

“These days, the frontier has broadened from the C-suite and boardroom to venture capital,” Alex says.

In early 2022, the Zampatti family backed a NSW-Government female venture capital fund named after Carla, but, disappointingly, it closed before a single investment was made. Alex and his sisters began work to do it themselves until meeting Scale Investors.

“The supremely talented team at Scale have a burning mission to deliver outstanding returns from female startups, and by doing so demonstrate what the rest of the industry has missed,” Alex says.

“I don’t see our investment in Scale as philanthropy. I see it as our chance to correct a market failure.

“We’re investing into an overlooked opportunity, not just to get superior returns but to give a shove to the whole venture capital industry. I’ll be happy when the VC industry realises the missed opportunity and we see copy-cat funds with the same focus.”

The opportunities keep coming and are showing no signs of slowing down. The influx of women in STEM over the past decade is one of the driving forces behind a bursting pipeline of women-led and diverse team start-ups.

“We’re seeing over 1,000 deals a year,” Roo explains. “Last year we did more than 300 first one-to one founder meetings; this year, we had 275 meetings in the first six months alone.

“The pipeline is extraordinary, and we’re still in a position of having to say no to exceptionally good deals because we can’t keep pace. That’s a great problem to have, but also still a problem.”

The slingshot investment for maternal health: Oli Medical

“If you’re a woman giving birth today, the reality is that you’re monitored with the same technology that monitored your grandma when she gave birth,” says Tara Croft, CEO of Oli Medical.

“That shocks people but it’s true. The existing tech is rudimentary and manual, leaving clinicians with fragmented data and reliant upon retrospective signals rather than predictive insight.”

Oli Medical (formerly Baymatob) is a wearable wireless sensor that provides real-time maternal-fetal monitoring that predicts and prevents complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Its founder, Dr. Sarah McDonald, researched and developed the predictive intelligence platform after her own traumatic birth experience.

“What we’re doing with Oli will slingshot maternal health from analogue to AI in one leap,” Tara explains. “We will have the ability to predict complications like stillbirth and hemorrhaging and when we can predict them, we can prevent them from happening.”

The technology is designed to be used in any setting, including at home, in the clinic or hospital.

“It’s for every mum everywhere,” Tara says. “It shouldn’t matter whether you’re rural, regional, or urban. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re living in a lower or middle-income country or a wealthy country. Our intent is to define a whole new category in maternal fetal monitoring, and to make better care available to everyone.”

The device, which has just completed a 1000-patient clinical trial, is roughly 18-months away from being in market and will be initially deployed in hospital settings in the US and Australia.

A $1 million investment from Scale Investors in a Series A3 round of $6.5 million brought total investment in the company to $25 million to date. Another round will open shortly, bringing the company to first revenues.

“Scale has been incredibly supportive of us, but more than that, they took the time to get to know us and build a relationship,” Tara says.

“Having investors who trust you, and a relationship where you can be open about the good things and the challenges, means you work together as a team. Scale brings the best of all of that in being able to give frank feedback but also being supportive in solution finding as well.”

One of the toughest solutions to find has been how to navigate the gender investment gap.

“Only 2% of all venture capital funding globally goes to female founders and leaders, and of that only 2% of that 2% goes to women’s health,” Tara explains. “It’s madness, and it’s insanely hard to find money to do this work.

“We all have a mother, a sister, an auntie. We expect that if they go to hospital, they’ll receive the best healthcare, but the reality is so many medical devices and drugs and technologies weren’t tested for women, weren’t tested on their bodies, didn’t consider their physiology. So, there’s a disconnect, because we expect the best from our healthcare for women, but we don’t invest in it.”

Having sat in countless meetings with potential investors, Tara attributes the disconnect to an ongoing lack of representation across multiple sectors.

“People solve problems they’ve personally experienced. So that’s the innovators and researchers. People fund problems they’ve personally experienced. That’s investors. People in the media communicate and elevate problems they’ve personally experienced.

“So, when we don’t have women sitting at the investment table or holding the purse strings, when we don’t have women who are leading our big media outlets, when women innovators and scientists can’t get funded, there is a huge gender innovation gap,” Tara continues.

“I go to a lot of events and hear about the great wealth transfer that will happen over the next few decades, but my question is, ‘Why do we need to wait?’ There are huge pots of wealth today that are sitting there ready to deploy, and why wouldn’t you be deploying it into the biggest opportunities?”

Philanthropy’s catalytic potential and ability to serve as risk capital are avenues Tara sees that could help shrink the investment chasm.

“Philanthropy can have an outsized impact in early-stage businesses, in women’s health and other spaces too,” she says. “The world needs this impact, but the impact won’t be realised without support. There’s a philanthropic opportunity here to have impact in businesses that just can’t access the capital.

“There’s a braveness in having an investment portfolio that looks different to everybody else’s and there’s a real opportunity in building an investment portfolio that looks beyond conventional approaches. One of the great privileges of deploying capital is the ability to champion innovative solutions and think independently about where impact and value lie.”

Proving speed to impact: Clean Slate Clinic

“Health equity has always been important to me,” says Clean Slate Clinic’s CEO, Pia Clinton Tarestad. “I’ve often thought to myself, ‘We’ve got to be able to do better than this’.”

After working in the National Health Service (NHS), Pia joined Deloitte in the UK before transferring to the Australian office where she became lead partner for healthcare. As a consultant, she witnessed the “speed to impact” ability of the right projects delivered at the right time.

In 2020, a convergence of personal and professional stressors took their toll and Pia walked away from her role with no plan.

“I was burnt out and dependent on alcohol, using it as a coping mechanism to get through each day,” she says.

As fate would have it, Pia’s best friend, Dr Chris Davis, asked her to help him scale a face-to-face alcohol withdrawal support service he’d been running at his GP clinic. Together, they developed a social mission to tear down the barriers to accessing addiction treatment and within six months the pair had launched Clean Slate Clinic as a social enterprise.

Clean Slate Clinic uses a scalable, fully remote model that enables people to access withdrawal and recovery support no matter where they live, for a fraction of the usual cost. Structured care is provided for 12 months, with groups running seven days a week and digital self-management available around the clock.

“Our team of alcohol and drug clinicians use virtual care and digital technology to service a gap in the market that enables people to withdraw from alcohol, stimulants or cannabis, from the comfort of their home,” Pia explains.

Pia was one of the first 10 users to put the model to the test, completing her own detox in February 2021. “That was when I knew, this can really work,” she says.

Clean Slate Clinic began seeing patients in July 2021. Government contracts and several NSW primary health networks quickly came on board, and the social enterprise recently secured its first statewide contract, in Tasmania. Around half of Clean Slate Clinic’s clients are direct consumers, 35 per cent have come via a private health insurer and 15 per cent through government services.

Demand for treatment is high. A 2019 survey by the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare found 9.9 per cent of Australians, or almost 1 in 10 drinkers, met the criteria for alcohol dependence.

“There are 25,000 detoxes done in Australia each year, so the gap between service availability and need is colossal,” Pia says. “There are very few people who don’t know anybody who’s been affected – it could be a family member, a friend or a co-worker, but it’s one degree of separation for most of us.”

Clean Slate Clinic also continues to fundraise for a compassionate access fund to help people from marginalised communities who cannot access government funding.

In its first year, Clean Slate Clinic assisted 72 clients; now, upwards of 72 new clients join in Australia each week. Revenue has grown from just over $70,000 in 2021 to $8.5 million in FY2025/26. In January 2026, the service launched in the UK.

Early support from the Snow Foundation and long-term support and more than $1 million from Scale Investors have been pivotal to Clean Slate Clinic’s success.

“Scale have been very supportive of what we’re doing from the very beginning – it’s like having a cheer squad behind you,” Pia says.

Philanthropy, she says, still has a valuable role to play as catalytic capital.

“I know philanthropists can be hesitant because it’s not project funding, but this type of growth funding is game changing, because it can compound very quickly in terms of impact. It really is an example of speed to impact.”

Beating the barriers

Logistical barriers play a significant role in limiting accessibility to treatment, particularly for people who live in regional or rural areas. Time and affordability are additional factors, along with language barriers for members of culturally diverse communities. But Pia says the number one barrier to getting help is stigma.

“Most people who are drinking at heavy levels are hiding it from their friends and family, and there’s a lot of shame when they can’t stop, because a lot of people still believe it’s a willpower issue,” she explains.

“If you’re in a marginalised community, whether that’s LGBTQI+ or First Nations communities, there’s an extra layer of stigma and if you’re a mother with young children, there’s a huge amount of judgment. Women make up about 30 per cent of patients in traditional treatment but are almost 60 per cent of our clients and that speaks to the additional barriers and stigma they face.”

Success rates to date have been overwhelmingly positive. At the three-month mark, 80 per cent of Clean Slate Clinic clients remain actively engaged in the integrated program, with a relapse rate of just seven per cent.

“There are fantastic providers out there, but the way the system is constructed is a contributing factor to traditional relapse rates which can be as high as 70 per cent,” Pia says. “We know from all the literature that it takes 100 days to break a habit, but the average treatment duration is 28 days. Those two things are incompatible.”

“We want to reach a million families and change the paradigm of addiction to one of hope and lasting resilience,” Pia continues.

“The more families we support, the more social impact we’re having. People sometimes forget about the impact upon children, but there’s an 83:1 return on investment if you can solve a parent’s struggle with alcohol or substance dependence.”