First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter

Open-sourcing conversations with experienced investors globally

First Cheque brings you the world of early-stage investing. Join us as we engage in insightful conversations with some top Investors worldwide. Uncover the inner workings of early-stage investing and gain practical knowledge from seasoned, successful investors. Learn about their perspectives, decision-making approaches, and the valuable lessons they've acquired throughout their journeys.

Whether you're a novice or an experienced investor, a founder or an operator, this show aims to inspire and equip you with the tools to become a proficient investor in early-stage businesses and understand how investors think. Hosted by Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter.

First Cheque is a Day One show. Day One® is the podcast network dedicated to founders, investors, and operators. Tune in for an enriching experience as we uncover the secrets to becoming a skilled early-stage investor.

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First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter

Closing the Gender Investment Gap with Data with Noga Edelstein

Noga Edelstein is the lead of the Equity Clear initiative, a not-for-profit effort to get Australian investors tracking pipeline diversity data with a common standard. She's also a former General Counsel at Yahoo, a multi-time founder, and has had her fingerprints across the Australian startup ecosystem for over a decade.

In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack why pre-seed funding to women is at its lowest level ever and how Equity Clear is building the data infrastructure to finally see where diverse founders are falling out of the pipeline. Noga shares what the UK's five-year head start has revealed, including that angel groups with at least 15% women invest in 10X the number of women-led companies, and why the mere act of tracking your own pipeline drives better outcomes.

You'll also hear how a broken website form accidentally proved that women disproportionately use cold inbound to reach investors, why male founders and LPs should be asking their investors about diversity tracking, and what sport can teach us about leveling the playing field through systemic tweaks like funded childcare for founders. Noga closes with her Big Cojones moment: quitting her General Counsel role at Yahoo with a newborn to go all in on a startup.

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Published 7 days ago

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Day One® exists to help founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often

Subscribe for helpful content from other successful founders, operators and investors

Join 755 other founders & investors receiving our emails. They're cool, are you? :)

* Regrettably, mel@canva.com is not on our list… yet.

Day One® is a registered trademark of W2D1 Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. © 2026 W2D1 Media Pty Ltd.