Ellen Farrell, the Saint Mary’s University professor who has been one of the key architects behind the Sobey School of Business’s entrepreneurship programming, is commercializing a new software product aimed at helping women founders perform better during question and answer sessions with investors.

InvestorQ&A is software designed to help entrepreneurs inspire more confidence from would-be funders with the help of regulatory focus theory — a field of psychology that essentially studies the behavioural contrasts between fear-based decision-making and goal-oriented decisions. In an interview Wednesday, Farrell said she sees it as useful to focus on question-and-answer sessions because pitch training itself is already widely available, whereas Q&A sessions represent their own specialized skillset.

Farrell specializes in researching the Atlantic Canadian startup ecosystem and has taken a leading role in organizing Venture Grade, the Sobey School’s student VC fund. She has also been the driving force behind SMU’s delegations to the international Venture Capital Investment Competition.

“InvestorQ&A basically addresses the increasingly compelling problem of women’s inability to raise venture capital,” said Farrell in an interview Wednesday. “And so, we know that excellent science proves that there are … techniques that women need to know about and know what to address in order to hone their investor Q&A, which is where the investment decisions are made.”

Last year, according to data from Entrevestor’s 2023 Atlantic Canada Startup Data Report, less than one per cent of the equity funding raised by the region’s companies flowed to businesses led by women, just $24.3 million. That happens to be almost the exact same amount of funds that have been raised by founders trained on InvestorQ&A, at $23.2 million.

Farrell originally created the InvestorQ&A platform to provide investor readiness training to student entrepreneurs at SMU. In that capacity, a little over 50 people used the system, with about another 200 using it since Farrell launched the company as an independent business. (She said SMU does not take an ownership stake in technologies developed by its faculty.)

“What we are doing is basically using behaviourally based instruction — role-play, practicing — to be able to inculcate women with qualities that help them look like the leaders that they are,” she said.

Farrell added that the instruction focuses on such questions as:  "What are the kinds of topics that are positively correlated with investment? And what are the kinds of topics that are negatively correlated?”

Farrell’s team, which includes five people, focused on Canada as its beachhead market, but now also has customers in the central United States. One recently acquired client has been the Sears think[box], a seven-story startup accelerator at Case Western Reserve University, a private research institution in Ohio. For startup support organizations that want to directly deliver all of their client programming, InvestorQ&A has also helped train accelerator employees to deliver the same training in a live format.

The company’s revenue model, she added, is to partner with startup support organizations or other entities that train entrepreneurs, like post-secondary institutions. As of now, the software is always presented with InvestorQ&A branding, though Farrell said white labeling the software could be a possibility in future for the right client.

“Some people just need that added gravitas that puts them over the edge, and they don’t know that’s what they need,” said Farrell. “They need somebody to help them understand. There is a discipline that you need to have to be seen as a leader in these areas, and you have to demonstrate that discipline.”