Retirement capital is long-term by design, largely untapped and within reach. Here's why women founders should access it.
The funding gap isn't closing on its own
When Once Upon a Farm co-founders Cassandra Curtis and Jennifer Garner rang the NYSE opening bell in February 2026, they took the health-focused baby and children’s food company public at a $724 million valuation, raising $198 million in one of the year's most-watched IPOs. They were setting a new precedent for what's possible when women-founded companies get the capital they need to scale. For most women founders, the path to that kind of capital is still uphill1.
Women-led businesses are growing. Between 2019 and 2023, women-owned firms outpaced the broader market in revenue, firm count and employment. An estimated 270,000+ women-owned employer firms now generate over $1M in annual revenue, a segment that has scaled well beyond what conventional small business lending was designed to support2.
Yet access to flexible growth capital hasn't kept pace. Funding for all-female founding teams has remained stubbornly low, consistently in the low single digits as a share of total VC dollars - a figure that has shown little meaningful improvement over the past decade3. Harvard Business Review has documented the structural dynamics at play: network-driven deal sourcing, pattern-matching bias, and pitch evaluation processes that are not neutral by design4.
Women-led businesses have built a measurable base of scale. The structural constraints on capital access are well-documented. What's less discussed is the large, underutilized pool of capital that isn't subject to those same gatekeeping dynamics: retirement accounts.
$18 trillion. Most of it untapped for private markets.
IRAs represent approximately 40% of all U.S. retirement assets, more than $18 trillion in long-term, tax-advantaged capital that can legally be directed into private market investments, including startups, venture funds, private companies, SPVs and early-stage deals5.
Most investors don't realize their retirement savings can be invested this way, and most founders don't think of offering it as a path. For women founders and fund managers navigating fundraising environments that don't always work in their favor, this represents a genuinely different kind of capital: long-term, patient and not dependent on institutional networks to access.
The retirement capital opportunity is further reinforced by a generational shift. An estimated 50–70% of long-term wealth is expected to transfer to women over the coming decades, driven by inheritance, longer life expectancy, and rising financial decision-making authority6. Women are increasingly the primary holders and allocators of retirement savings, and they're looking for places to put that capital to work. Alto's own research found that 63% of women cite growth and income potential as primary drivers when evaluating alternative investments7.
The interest among women investors in growth-oriented private markets is measurable and growing. The infrastructure that makes IRA investing in private markets accessible has evolved greatly, though few have made it work seamlessly for both founders raising and investors deploying capital, which is a large part of why awareness on both sides has lagged.
The case for IRA capital as a fundraising channel
For women founders, the appeal of retirement capital isn't just about the dollars. It's about what those dollars represent.
IRA capital is long-term by design, aligned with the same time horizons that characterize building a company rather than a two-year liquidity event. Investors deploying retirement funds aren't looking for a quick exit; they're allocating toward growth.
This capital also reaches a different investor base. For many of the most natural backers of women-led businesses — former colleagues, community members, operators who also write checks, aligned investors who believe in the mission — the funds needed to participate may be sitting in retirement accounts rather than liquid savings. Without a clear, reliable path to use those funds, they can end up on the sidelines, not from lack of interest, but from lack of a flexible path to participation.
A seamless IRA investing experience unlocks LP capital that wouldn't have been invested with liquid dollars alone.
In practice: How Women Invest
How Women Invest (HWI) is a venture capital firm backing 100% women-founded teams and is one of the clearest examples of what it looks like when a women-led fund actively builds retirement capital into its fundraising strategy. HWI's portfolio spans healthtech, fintech, climatetech and family tech; companies solving problems that matter to the investors most likely to back them. For many of HWI's LPs, investing through an IRA is a way to put long-term retirement capital behind companies they actually believe in.
By proactively directing LPs to Alto as their preferred IRA custodian, HWI has brought in $3.16M of its total raise in retirement capital, with IRA investments representing approximately 23% of its current Fund III raise. For HWI, working with Alto gave existing and prospective LPs a more flexible way to participate without the need for a new fundraising approach.
Read the full How Women Invest case study
How to start raising IRA capital with Alto
Alto acts as the custodian for self-directed IRAs, handling the account administration, compliance, investor onboarding and ongoing support that makes IRA investing in private deals possible. Account fees are charged directly to investors as their investments are placed, meaning there is no placement fee and no cut of the raise for issuers.
Designed for any type of private capital raise, Alto's private deal room gives founders and fund managers a direct path to self-directed IRA capital, with no technical integration required and no changes to how founders are already managing their raise.
Founders set up an offering page, share a personalized link with prospective investors, and track commitments in real time. Investors receive a dedicated landing page to access the raise and can fund through rollovers, transfers or cash contributions. Funds typically arrive within two business days of transfer completion.
Raise capital on your own terms
Retirement capital is underutilized across private markets. For women-led raises in particular, the opportunity is worth addressing directly. Using retirement funds, women founders can access long-term capital that works alongside or independent of traditional venture fundraising. The same holds for women fund managers raising from their LP base, as well as women angel leaders directing investors to deploy retirement capital behind the companies and funds they believe in. Across the ecosystem, it's a more flexible path to growth capital for the people building it.
The $18 trillion sitting in U.S. retirement accounts isn't waiting for institutional gatekeepers. For founders who proactively offer a clear, reliable path to IRA investing, it represents a meaningful and largely untapped source of long-term capital.
Speak with our team about your raise
1 Yahoo Finance. Jennifer Garner-backed kids' food brand Once Upon a Farm rises 16% in Wall Street debut. February 6, 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jennifer-garner-backed-kids-food-brand-once-upon-a-farm-rises-16-in-wall-street-debut-221123011.html
2 Wells Fargo. 2025 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report. https://newsroom.wf.com
3PitchBook / All Raise. Women in Venture Reports. https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/women-in-venture-report; https://allraise.org/data/; Babson College, The Diana Project. https://www.babson.edu/academics/centers-and-institutes/blank-center/growth-oriented-women-entrepreneurs/diana-project/
4 Harvard Business Review. How the VC Pitch Process Is Failing Female Entrepreneurs. January 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/01/how-the-vc-pitch-process-is-failing-female-entrepreneurs
5 Investment Company Institute (ICI). IRA Assets and Ownership, Q2 2025. https://www.ici.org
6 Bank of America Institute. The Great Wealth Transfer. https://institute.bankofamerica.com
7 Alto. Tomorrow's Retirement Is Here: Why Alternatives Are No Longer Optional. Proprietary survey of ~1,000 U.S. investors, July 2025. Responses disaggregated by self-reported gender for segment analysis.
