About Athena Capital
Athena invests in growth businesses and guides them to exit with the support of our elite, women-led council with Fortune 500 board members, founders, operators, investors, and CEOs
Athena Capital by the numbers
How Athena Capital’s story began
In the summer of 2020, fintech founder and venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim reflected on the nascent special purpose acquisition company boom.
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Having just gone through an exit herself when her FinTech company was acquired in 2020, she visualized the typical story unfolding where women were not an integral part of a new financial product — but she wouldn’t accept that.
Inspired by Athena, the embodiment of wisdom and strength in Greek mythology, Freidheim began assembling a formidable group of leaders to create the Athena Council, a group of executives and board members with outstanding execution capabilities brimming with talent and experience that rival any other fund in the market.
The Athena Council
The Athena Council includes more than 20 CXOs today. Having been operators and investors themselves, the women of the Athena network add expertise to further accelerate sourcing, diligence, and value-creation.
Each member understands the passion, dedication, and expertise needed to drive meaningful growth and transformation. They also maintain strong relationships with their companies even after the companies go public or are acquired. Together as a group we currently generate over $2 billion in revenues created from scratch as founders. In aggregate, we have been on a number of public boards, including Oracle, American Airlines, Blackrock, BNY Mellon, Citibank, Comcast, Ralph Lauren, Starbucks, WeWork, among others and over 30 private company boards and CEOs.
Athena Capital’s journey continues
Athena Capital is a private equity pre IPO fund making investments with wisdom and strength. We create long term partnerships to empower founders to reach their full potential pre and post exit.
Athena is architected with market-leading talent, access to broader pools of capital, and transaction experience to facilitate access to the equity capital markets for leading companies. Athena views its partner companies as just that—partners. By blending their deep management and operational experience with high-quality investors who believe in the team and its mission, Athena Capital sets their portfolio companies up for long-term success.
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Athena Capital, taking exit-ready companies to market