"A crucial step to helping more female entrepreneurs succeed may be to encourage more women to join venture capital firms."
Studies show that women-led startups outperform their male counterparts in revenue. Other research indicates that companies with more gender diversity generate better financial returns. Yet less than 3 percent of venture capital dollars went to all-women founding teams last year. That’s just $2.5 billion of the $84 billion raised by startups in 2017.
A crucial step to helping more female entrepreneurs succeed may be to encourage more women to join venture capital firms. Some point to the investor community as one reason for the gap. A 2016 survey conducted by the National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte found that just 11 percent of VC firm investment partners were women. Evidence suggests that the lack of female partners makes firms less likely to invest in female-led startups.
“If the goal is to have more successful technology startups led by women, it may not be enough to simply encourage more women to start companies,” Sahil Raina, an assistant professor of finance at Alberta School of Business, wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “A crucial step to helping more female entrepreneurs succeed may be to encourage more women to join venture capital firms.”
There are burgeoning efforts to fund more companies with female leaders, from Arlan Hamilton’s Backstage Capital to firms such as Female Founders Fund.
www.geekwire.com
Read More
0 comments:
Join the Conversation