Joanne Wilson was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an underwater nuclear warfare engineer. Both parents were entrepreneurs and had their own businesses. They divorced when Wilson was 16. Wilson majored in Finance and Retail Management at Simmons College in Boston, which she graduated in 1983. She met her future husband Fred Wilson while at college and they moved to New York City.
Career
Wilson began her career at Macy’s, working there for 4 years in retail apparel department. Her first job at Macy’s was overseeing a cosmetics department. After Macy’s she oversaw a company in the garment center, then worked at sales for the startup magazine and events company called Silicon Alley Reporter. She also chaired the nonprofit MOUSE, the organization focused on technology in inner-city schools. Wilson has been blogging since 1994 under the name Gotham Gal. Later, she named her investment fund Gotham Gal Ventures. She turned to investing in 2007. In 2010, together with Nancy Hechinger from the New York University she co-founded and co-chaired an annual Women Entrepreneurs Festival. From 2010 to 2015, she chaired the board of Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit that promotes and trains female and minority bakers. She also was the first co-Chair of Path Forward, a non-profit, established in 2018 with a mission to get people back to work after they’ve taken time off for caregiving. Since 2009, Wilson is involved in real estate development in the New York City.
Investments
In 2007, Wilson made her first investment into Lockhart Steele’s startup Curbed. Some of her early investments included Food52, Rick's Picks, DailyWorth, Hot Bread Kitchen and Scoot. In 2014, she invested in Blue Bottle Coffee, a coffee roaster and retailer, and in Spoon University, a food media company, in 2015. Later in 2015, she invested in Nestio, the NY-based leasing and marketing platform for residential landlords. Wilson became known for investing in women-led startups. In 2012, 13 of her 17 investments were in tech and out of those 13, 10 were women-founded companies. As of 2016, around 70 percent of her investments were in companies led by women. By 2017, she has backed more than 90 female-founded companies, including 3 of the 11 black women-led startups to have raised over $1 million. In 2017, Wilson made two angel investments in the cannabis industry: Octavia Wellness and Beboe. In August 2018, Forbes ranked her 25th in the list of “50 Angel Investors Based On Investment Volume And Successful Exits” with 63 investments.
