Investing in women brings Sarah Dusek joy and success

One of the WPO’s newer members, venture capitalist Sarah Dusek, makes her money investing in women’s businesses.

Sarah, who joined WPO a year ago after being asked to speak at one of the organization’s events, is a platinum member, meaning her business grosses over $10-million a year.

“I love working with female entrepreneurs. I love being an entrepreneur myself, and I wanted to share what I learned the hard way by investing in women and mentoring them,” she says.

Sarah’s first business venture failed, but she went on to launch Under Canvas, an upmarket American camping company that she sold in 2018 for more than $100-million.

Sarah and her husband, Jacob Dusek, ran Under Canvas for 10 years, learning many lessons along the way. In 2019 Sarah realized a long-cherished dream, founding Enygma Ventures, which has invested $10-million in women-owned businesses in Africa over the four years it has existed.

“Investing in women in business became a goal after I encountered so many sharks in my own attempts to raise capital and I thought, ‘My goodness, it doesn’t have to be like this,’” she says.

Sarah also wrote a book. Thinking Bigger: A Pitch-Deck Formula for Women Who Want to Change the World shares how Sarah went from being a law graduate working in the non-governmental organization (NGO) sphere to venture capitalist, and what she learned along the way.

The book aims to help female entrepreneurs understand what investors are looking for, and how to scale up a small business.

Giving investors what they want involves more than simply presenting impressive turnover, she says: “You can be doing millions of dollars in business and not be investable.”

The task of raising business capital is much more difficult for women than for men – Sarah says, quoting Boston Consulting Group figures, that only 2% of all venture capital dollars go to female business founders.

This is why Enygma Ventures focuses on women. It focuses on Africa because Sarah “fell in love” with the continent when she was a young graduate working in NGOs in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa.

Five years into working in Zimbabwe, Sarah felt burnt out and disillusioned with the NGO sector. She realized that businesses are designed to solve problems, and are generally better suited to improving people’s lives than NGOs.

That’s how she “made the leap” to establishing Under Canvas, which was inspired by what Sarah saw of the African safari experience, and by the “big grassland, big sky, big mountains” of Montana, on the US border with Canada.

Since selling the phenomenally successful “glamping” company in 2018, Sarah and Jacob have established a new high-end travel company, Few & Far, which offers “thoughtfully curated carbon-neutral journeys to some of the world’s most extraordinary wild places”.

Sarah wrote Thinking Bigger during a sabbatical year that she took in 2023. Taking inspiration from the biblical Sabbath, Sarah gives herself a sabbatical every seven years. 

“It’s also good farming practice,” she says. What’s more, the rewards are high. In 2016, the sabbatical year she took before 2023, Sarah was “knee-deep” in building Under Canvas and “took the pressure off” simply by not pursuing growth in the company. In 2017, she raised $15-million, which allowed her to reimagine the company and also “really scale it”.

Being an entrepreneur is often lonely, says Sarah. That’s why she has enjoyed her first year as a WPO member so much.

“I’ve got some wonderful new friends through it; women who are trying to do really big, extraordinary things. We need each other…trying to do really big, extraordinary things is something other people don’t get.”

Her greatest love, however, is Enygma Ventures. Sharing what she has learnt with other women gives her a deep sense of fulfillment and connection. “I’ve learned many things. The things you think will be easy are often hard, and the things you think will be hard are often easy. It’s wonderful to realize you share the same challenges. When I was starting out in business there were so many times when I thought I was the only one having the experience I was having. That’s often not true.”