Many entrepreneurs in the venture capital space reflect an ingrained view of what society indicates founders should look like: white, wealthy, educated men. To the disadvantage of women entrepreneurs and especially founders from other diverse and underrepresented groups, many investors doling out VC funds reflect this established norm, too.
A lack of space at the table for women likely contributes to the amount of venture capital funding they are able to raise for their companies. In 2018, $4.3 billion went to female-founded startups globally, representing just 1.7% of the $285 billion VCs invested, according to PitchBook data. In Europe, companies started by women received 1.4% of venture capital invested into the region, while female founders in the US took a slightly larger percentage (2.4%).
Slow but promising shifts in the VC landscape
Recently, some progress has been made toward creating a more equitable VC landscape where women’s ideas—from an online platform where women can rent high-end clothing to period-tracking apps for better health monitoring—receive the funding they need. Cultural conversations around women in the workplace, including topics such as pay disparities between men and women and barriers to career advancement, as well as growing recognition around the benefits of diverse teams may be some of the factors contributing to a slow but promising shift.
Entrepreneurs including Darktrace‘s Poppy Gustafsson and Nicole Eagan and Glossier‘s Emily Weiss—female founders of unicorns—continue to blaze the trail, while capital from women-led VC firms like Boralis and Female Founders Fund create new lanes for startups founded by women.
Midway through 2019, VCs have invested $113 billion globally, putting this year on a slower pace than last—but the amount going to female-founded companies is projected to be about a billion dollars more than in 2018, according to PitchBook data.
How to find women entrepreneurs with PitchBook
With more investors looking to back female founders, PitchBook is making it easier than ever to find, research and connect with them. To identify women entrepreneurs in the platform, follow the below steps:
- Start a people search by hovering over the magnifying glass icon on the left-hand side of the platform and selecting people
- Once on the people search page, select female from the gender dropdown menu
- Select founder from the position level dropdown menu or check the box that says “founder/founding partner”
- Select venture capital-backed from the firm type dropdown menu
- Select the locations or industries you’re interested in if you want to refine the search
- Run the search for a list of women entrepreneurs
- Click on your search results to learn more about each person, their companies and more
As a starting point, here’s a search for women entrepreneurs.
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