The Few Startups with Female Founders Raise More Venture Cash
- Companies with at least one woman raise 21% more over time
- Only 22% of venture-funded firms had women on teams in 2018
Photographer: Andrew Neel
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Startups with at least one female founder raised 21% more in venture capital funding than companies with all male teams, according to a study released Thursday by the Kauffman Fellows Research Center, a two-year training program for senior venture capitalists.
In earlier rounds, mixed-gender teams do just as well as those without women, but the advantage grows in the later stages of fund raising. In the third- and fourth-round raises, companies with at least one female founder get on average $23 million in VC investment, compared with $18 million on average for all-male teams. The analysis used data provided by the market researcher Crunchbase of more than 90,000 U.S. venture-backed companies from 2001 through 2018.