It is tempting, and wrong, to treat the funding gap as if it reflected some difference in the quality of the companies. The evidence points the other way: the gap is structural, rooted in who has access to warm introductions, whose pattern an investor unconsciously matches against, and which founders face the sharper version of due diligence. Strong companies are going underfunded for reasons that have nothing to do with how good they are.
That framing matters because it points directly at the remedy. If the gap is about access, narrative, and capital, then the levers that close it are access, narrative, and capital — which happen to be exactly what a firm that prepares companies, knows investors, and writes its own cheques can bring. We can't fix the whole market, but we can make sure the founders we work with meet it from a position of strength.