O’Melveny’s Momentum Team Joins Forces with UBS to Help Women Founders
May 28, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK—May 28, 2020—A team of O’Melveny lawyers are stepping up to help equip women entrepreneurs with the tools they need to raise capital and effectively scale their businesses. In 1972, women-owned businesses in the United States earned a combined revenue of US$8.1 billion. By 2018, this number had soared to US$1.8 trillion—a stunning 217 times higher. Despite this success, women entrepreneurs still face steep hurdles. Research shows that women often fail to acquire the financial support they need to take their businesses to the next level.
Members of O’Melveny’s Momentum team—which helps technology companies at every stage of development—are reaching in to help by participating in Project Entrepreneur, a UBS-sponsored program to equip women entrepreneurs with the tools they need to raise capital and effectively scale their businesses.
While launching Momentum’s east coast outpost, Momentum NYC, corporate partner Jeeho Lee was approached to serve as instructor in Project Entrepreneur’s Investment Readiness Program. Lee is helping teach 50 early-stage women founders on key topics, including raising capital, creating defensible financial models, and identifying the right investors. Silicon Valley-based counsel Melissa Wright and Wenting Yu are also involved, serving as advisors to the program participants.
O’Melveny and Project Entrepreneur also have teamed up with The Riveter, which provides co-working spaces and an online digital community programs for women, to host a six week legal clinic for women founders as part of the Riveter’s Founded By program, which is sponsored by UBS. The clinic, led by Lee, Wright, and Yu, began on May 21 and is currently accepting enrollees at femalefounders@omm.com.
“It’s an absolute honor to get the opportunity to help support and empower other women in our community,” said Lee. “Project Entrepreneur has done amazing work for many years now and we’re excited to be able to contribute.”
Wright echoed Lee’s sentiments: “I am always looking for ways to promote women in the startup world, and the prospect of getting involved with a program with such a powerful partnership and vision was too good to pass up.”
First launched by UBS in 2015, Project Entrepreneur has trained more than 1,600 female founders and created new on-ramps to entrepreneurship for women across the country, with alumni going on to raise US$45 million in funding. For more information on Project Entrepreneur, check out its website.
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Contact:
Christopher Rieck
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
+1 212 326 2218
crieck@omm.com