As she began yet another meeting with yet another venture capitalist, Denverite Kristin Taylor took a deep breath, looked her mark in the eye, and launched into the pitch she had spent months perfecting: Under the branding of Mom Juice, Taylor and her co-founder, Macie Mincey, would make low-sugar, affordable, delicious wine with minimal ingredients, all of which would be clearly listed on the label. They would market it to consumers sensitive to gluten (or any of the 40-plus undisclosed ingredients and additives in many mainstream wines); to new mothers with nursing-induced dietary restrictions; and to anyone looking to pick up a cute gift for Mom. As millennial women of color, Taylor and Mincey would ensure their product appealed to young, diverse populations that the industry, with its pretentious sniff-and-swirl culture, had long ignored. When Taylor finished her spiel, the potential investor didn’t inquire about the company’s profit margins or advertising plan. Instead, he asked, “What about Dad Juice?”

“We pitch to a lot of old white guys,” Taylor says, “and that’s the number one question they bring up. What are you doing for men?” Taylor and Mincey can support their demographic target with statistics (women in America control or influence 85 percent of all consumer spending) and proven demand: Following the late 2021 release of its first wine, a Pinot Grigio, Mom Juice did $98,000 in sales over the following year on a marketing budget of less than $4,000, Taylor says. Still, investors seemed wary of backing a product with an intended audience as narrow as mothers (and anyone who has a mother). “ ‘Moms are a niche.’ That’s always what we hear, which is crazy,” says Mincey, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. “If people don’t believe in marketing to women, then they’re not the investor for us.”

Thanks in part to high-grossing pop culture successes such as 2023’s Barbie movie and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, projects catering to female audiences are increasingly being seen as bankable, and by mid-summer 2024, Mom Juice had raised nearly a million dollars (including a $20,000 prize from Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition fund). Taylor and Mincey have expanded their line to include a rosé, a Sauvignon Blanc, a red blend, and a Cabernet Sauvignon, which are available in 400-plus stores across Colorado, North Carolina, and Tennessee. “You’re really putting your investment in the founder and your belief in what they’re trying to do,” says Paige Goss, the founder and CEO of Denver’s Point Solutions Group, a cybersecurity systems integration firm. She’s also an angel investor who’s provided capital to more than 20 mostly women-led companies, including Mom Juice. “I met Kristin and I was like, Well, she’s gonna pretty much do anything she wants.”

What Taylor wants next is a lead investor to write a big fat check, an act that would spur others to do the same through a new round of funding. That money would underwrite Mom Juice’s larger ambition to create more products, including a nonalcoholic wine, and secure shelf space in retailers across the nation. But even putting aside the historical disadvantages facing people who look like Taylor and Mincey (in 2022, women founders received less than two percent of investment dollars in the United States, and women of color got just 0.39 percent), now is a tough time for anyone to raise money in Colorado, Goss says. Not enough of the homegrown businesses that received lots of investment during the pandemic have gone public or been acquired, which means money isn’t flowing back to angels or VCs. “We’re all cash-strapped,” Goss says, adding that uncertainty around this fall’s presidential election is also creating hesitancy to invest.

Over the first half of this year, Mom Juice went through the due diligence process with multiple Denver VC firms. Again and again, Taylor says, they were told that they had passed the vetting requirements and that investors loved the product, but no one was willing to sign a deal. “What we’re seeing is everyone [talking about] women in venture funding. We should get women more funding. We should fund more businesses that are profitable. We should fund Black women,” Taylor says. “But when it comes to doing the work, no one wants to actually do that part. I need someone to step up.”

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