8 ms·

Billions flood the Nordics but female founders just receive 1.3% of VC funding

23 points by punnerud 6y ago

callamdelaney 6y ago
This is a useless statistic. What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion - and it's notably missing from the entire article..
- Rick1 6y ago
  Well, it's useless if the purpose is to inform. If on the other hand the purpose is to create outrage...
- gryzzly 6y ago
  read two paragraphs, make an effort > All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums.
  - subtypefiddler 6y ago
    The article doesn't give the proportion of mixed and all-female teams, just of all male teams. To quote you "make an effort".
    - xboxnolifes 6y ago
      While it doesn't mentioned mixed percentages, it does state the all-female teams in the very next sentence.
  - Rick1 6y ago
    And all female teams made up 1%. "make an effort"
- daleharvey 6y ago
  If your definition of fairness is "we created an environment so toxic to an entire gender that they don't participate in it" Then sure.
  - draugadrotten 6y ago
    Do you believe it is because of the toxic environment that CIS males don't participate in synchronized swimming.
    - daleharvey 6y ago
      There is certainly systematic inequality between particular sports for sure. There is a difference though of course, being excluded from a sport can on an individual level be sad it certainly doesnt have the same impact as an entire gender being exluded from wealth and power.
    - yokaze 6y ago
      Actually, I do. Not necessarily from the people doing synchronised swimming... Just imagine, if you yourself actually would like to do synchronised swimming, what would happen? How would the people around you react? How would that make you feel about it?
      - alextheparrot 6y ago
        A parallel experience I’ve had biases me towards expecting that people would most likely be supportive. I was the only guy in a hip hop dance class a friend invited me to - the instructor called out when I did moves right and generally made me feel like I was progressing. We should try things that interest us and be understanding that we won’t have the same status in those activities as the ones we’re good at. This isn’t to say that startup disparities are caused by personal anxiety (I personally believe the structural narrative more in that case). It is to say, though, that we sometimes build up personal barriers where none truly exist - especially for simple things like sports
        6y ago
- supergirl 6y ago
  > What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion The conclusion is pretty clear and damning for Nordic countries: for WHATEVER reasons women don't get funding. You can complain that the cause is not fully explained by these statistics. But the conclusion is pretty clear. Btw, the article does try to explain the numbers more: > All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums. > For all-female teams, the opposite was true. On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding. I only skimmed the article. I'm not sure if these numbers show how many women founders got NO funding. I think it's common sense that women founders are very rare. But I don't see how you can take consolation in this explanation.
treelovinhippie 6y ago
Super misleading. Here's the actual stats pulled from the article: * 83% of startups were all-male and got 93% of funding. * 6% of startups were all-female and got 1.3% of funding. * 11% of startups were mixed and got 5.7% of funding. Still an imbalance but paints a very different picture. Clearly the industry needs to attract more women generally before you start crying inequity.
- pletnes 6y ago
  6% get 1.3% => 5x too little. I think we can cry a little.
  - Avalaxy 6y ago
    No, you can still not conclude that. There are still many many differences to take into account. What sort of businesses do these women start? Do they need less money for that? Are those industries less attractive to VCs (for example because they are not growth-markets)? Do women maybe prefer to raise less money so they get to keep more equity?
    - pletnes 6y ago
      Then cry «investigate», at least. 5x is a fairly large X.
      - roenxi 6y ago
        Doesn't mean anything though. I searched for picture of a "Basketball Team", and in the team in the first photo there are 7x as many black people as white. An infinite ratio of men to women too. That isn't evidence of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. It is due to the rather difficult to dispute fact that for reasons uncertain black men seem to play better basketball. I don't even know anything about basketball I just picked a stereotype. I'm all for investigations; but report back when there is evidence of a problem not evidence of a difference. Differences are routine.
  - md5person 6y ago
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Is there an insight on why? Is it because VC were willing to give less to them because they were women? That there were less well connected? That their negotiation skills didn't match up? That the nature of the projects they choose were perceived as less attractive? Lots of possible reasons here, and the solutions to choose can be very different depending of the causes.
- draugadrotten 6y ago
  as always, there's xkcd: https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/
ponker 6y ago
Would be interesting to see this data by sector. Female founders are much more prevalent in some sectors (eCommerce, Health) than others (Infrastructure, Blockchain)
- plafl 6y ago
  There is a graph of sectors when at least one founder is female but there is no equivalent data for all male founders so I cannot compare
danishdev 6y ago
Where's the bad part of this statistic?
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  Why? Because you think women shouldn't get funding?
  - ominous 6y ago
    Do you know how much should female founders get, as a percent of VC funding for a given country? If you do, then something is wrong already. Why should sex be the measure of how much some founder gets? If you don't know, then you also don't know what is wrong with the statistic. Do you also think women should not get funding? Take a step back and think of the real purpose of the article: outrage and appeal to feelings.
    - supergirl 6y ago
      > Do you know how much should female founders get, as a percent of VC funding for a given country? I think I know. Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding.
      - ominous 6y ago
        > Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding. Your "they" betrays you. The women in the population are not the women founders the article focuses on. The 1.3% relates to the absolute share of money raised for woman-founded companies. Women are not 50% of the founders, nor are female-founded companies valued at 50% of the market total (using this as a proxy for how much they raise, but agree this is not 1:1), nor are all companies asking for funding at the same time, nor are investors meeting with all companies, nor, nor, nor... I come back to the original point: sex does not predicate founding, nor should it.
ominous 6y ago
The article manages to use "just receive 1.3% of VC funding" without stating what amount would warrant no usage of "just". It would help if these kind of equity driven articles made the effort of not counting on the naive heart of the reader to understand what is being said. Sure, a value is less than another value and a sex difference is mentioned, so the reader is put on the spot to immediately understand that the values should be different. But how different? Might as well count if there's an imbalance on north-south vs east-west crossings by sex on a city center, and then hope someone feels the need to conclude "but of course, they should be the same!".
- shalmanese 6y ago
  What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just? How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive?
  - ominous 6y ago
    You assume the sex lens is how VC funds should be measured. > What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just? If there were sex quotas for amount of funding and female founders got less than the law dictates, I'd understand a "just". If some known process we agree is fair and is expected to yield X but yields <X, I'd also not react at a "just". No such process exists for VC funding. Readers are being coerced into expecting a value to exist. > How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive? I did not realize VC funding was meant to be fair. Investors will have their reasons, startups will have their way of marketing themselves and people will have their network of contacts, to state 3 constraints. Have we reached the technocratic utopia where society is procedurally generated to be fair? No.
subtypefiddler 6y ago
When reading the source https://my.visme.co/view/01070kx3-unconventional-ventures-no https://my.visme.co/view/01070kx3-unconventional-ventures-no... the divide goes: Gender | % Companies (#) | % Funding All men | 85 (1473) | 88.81 All women| 6.35 (110) | 2.21 Mixed | 8.66 (150) | 8.98 Notes: - There is no disparity when it comes to number of rounds - The trend is decrease in funding from all men teams (-10 points compared to 2019) and increase mostly for mixed teams (+10 points) and women (+2 points) (their numbers don't add up to 100...)
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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mkl95 6y ago
The article seems to imply gender inequality is a major issue in Nordic countries. The truth is they are light years ahead of their European neighbours in the matter.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Gender equality paradox can explain this. But I'm not sure it applies to funding.
gjgjjsdoeklklkl 6y ago
Apart from the number games already commented on by others: I think the example of Theranos has shown that given the right subject, female founders have no issue collecting large sums of funding money. Those "poor female founders" articles always fail to mention that many startups (or businesses) by women tend to be in specific industry sectors, like fashion or childcare. So unfair that they can't get a unicorn evaluation for their "exclusive handbags" idea.
supergirl 6y ago
so sad that people nitpick on this article, trying to brush it off. for WHATEVER reasons, women got only 1% of total funding. is that not bad by itself? does it matter that the reason is that there were few women to begin with? that makes it even worse. at least if VC bias was the only cause then this bias would be confined to one domain and easier to fix.
- danishdev 6y ago
  "is that not bad by itself?" No
  - supergirl 6y ago
    why not? women shouldn't be founders?
    - danishdev 6y ago
      Try harder with your demagoguery. This is not Twitter, these cheap tricks are not going to work.
- mr_woozy 6y ago
  are you even bothering to read and understand the comments here?
- oytis 6y ago
  If you believe that being a startup founder is an inherently good thing, then it's bad. But the former is not self-evident. Some pointed out that risk-weighted income of a startup founder might lower than that of someone on a conventional full-time job.
thinkingemote 6y ago
Gender equality paradox should tell us that in less gender equal societies women founders should get more funding. Anyone know if that study has been done?

23 points by punnerud 6y ago

This is a useless statistic. What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion - and it's notably missing from the entire article..

Rick1 6y ago
Well, it's useless if the purpose is to inform. If on the other hand the purpose is to create outrage...
gryzzly 6y ago
read two paragraphs, make an effort > All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums.
- subtypefiddler 6y ago
  The article doesn't give the proportion of mixed and all-female teams, just of all male teams. To quote you "make an effort".
  - xboxnolifes 6y ago
    While it doesn't mentioned mixed percentages, it does state the all-female teams in the very next sentence.
- Rick1 6y ago
  And all female teams made up 1%. "make an effort"
daleharvey 6y ago
If your definition of fairness is "we created an environment so toxic to an entire gender that they don't participate in it" Then sure.
- draugadrotten 6y ago
  Do you believe it is because of the toxic environment that CIS males don't participate in synchronized swimming.
  - daleharvey 6y ago
    There is certainly systematic inequality between particular sports for sure. There is a difference though of course, being excluded from a sport can on an individual level be sad it certainly doesnt have the same impact as an entire gender being exluded from wealth and power.
  - yokaze 6y ago
    Actually, I do. Not necessarily from the people doing synchronised swimming... Just imagine, if you yourself actually would like to do synchronised swimming, what would happen? How would the people around you react? How would that make you feel about it?
    - alextheparrot 6y ago
      A parallel experience I’ve had biases me towards expecting that people would most likely be supportive. I was the only guy in a hip hop dance class a friend invited me to - the instructor called out when I did moves right and generally made me feel like I was progressing. We should try things that interest us and be understanding that we won’t have the same status in those activities as the ones we’re good at. This isn’t to say that startup disparities are caused by personal anxiety (I personally believe the structural narrative more in that case). It is to say, though, that we sometimes build up personal barriers where none truly exist - especially for simple things like sports
      - 6y ago
supergirl 6y ago
> What proportion of startups are founded by women? Only with this statistic can we draw a fair conclusion The conclusion is pretty clear and damning for Nordic countries: for WHATEVER reasons women don't get funding. You can complain that the cause is not fully explained by these statistics. But the conclusion is pretty clear. Btw, the article does try to explain the numbers more: > All male teams made up 83% of the startups but they raised 93% of total funding, which means that they raised larger sums. > For all-female teams, the opposite was true. On top of the female-founded startups finding it difficult to raise any money at all, the 6% of startups that did, only received 1.3% of the funding. I only skimmed the article. I'm not sure if these numbers show how many women founders got NO funding. I think it's common sense that women founders are very rare. But I don't see how you can take consolation in this explanation.

treelovinhippie 6y ago

Super misleading. Here's the actual stats pulled from the article: * 83% of startups were all-male and got 93% of funding. * 6% of startups were all-female and got 1.3% of funding. * 11% of startups were mixed and got 5.7% of funding. Still an imbalance but paints a very different picture. Clearly the industry needs to attract more women generally before you start crying inequity.

pletnes 6y ago
6% get 1.3% => 5x too little. I think we can cry a little.
- Avalaxy 6y ago
  No, you can still not conclude that. There are still many many differences to take into account. What sort of businesses do these women start? Do they need less money for that? Are those industries less attractive to VCs (for example because they are not growth-markets)? Do women maybe prefer to raise less money so they get to keep more equity?
  - pletnes 6y ago
    Then cry «investigate», at least. 5x is a fairly large X.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      Doesn't mean anything though. I searched for picture of a "Basketball Team", and in the team in the first photo there are 7x as many black people as white. An infinite ratio of men to women too. That isn't evidence of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. It is due to the rather difficult to dispute fact that for reasons uncertain black men seem to play better basketball. I don't even know anything about basketball I just picked a stereotype. I'm all for investigations; but report back when there is evidence of a problem not evidence of a difference. Differences are routine.
- md5person 6y ago

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Is there an insight on why? Is it because VC were willing to give less to them because they were women? That there were less well connected? That their negotiation skills didn't match up? That the nature of the projects they choose were perceived as less attractive? Lots of possible reasons here, and the solutions to choose can be very different depending of the causes.

draugadrotten 6y ago
as always, there's xkcd: https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/

ponker 6y ago

Would be interesting to see this data by sector. Female founders are much more prevalent in some sectors (eCommerce, Health) than others (Infrastructure, Blockchain)

plafl 6y ago
There is a graph of sectors when at least one founder is female but there is no equivalent data for all male founders so I cannot compare

danishdev 6y ago

Where's the bad part of this statistic?

bergstromm466 6y ago
Why? Because you think women shouldn't get funding?
- ominous 6y ago
  Do you know how much should female founders get, as a percent of VC funding for a given country? If you do, then something is wrong already. Why should sex be the measure of how much some founder gets? If you don't know, then you also don't know what is wrong with the statistic. Do you also think women should not get funding? Take a step back and think of the real purpose of the article: outrage and appeal to feelings.
  - supergirl 6y ago
    > Do you know how much should female founders get, as a percent of VC funding for a given country? I think I know. Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding.
    - ominous 6y ago
      > Given that 50% of population is women, for every country (more or less), then they should get 50% of the funding. Your "they" betrays you. The women in the population are not the women founders the article focuses on. The 1.3% relates to the absolute share of money raised for woman-founded companies. Women are not 50% of the founders, nor are female-founded companies valued at 50% of the market total (using this as a proxy for how much they raise, but agree this is not 1:1), nor are all companies asking for funding at the same time, nor are investors meeting with all companies, nor, nor, nor... I come back to the original point: sex does not predicate founding, nor should it.

ominous 6y ago

The article manages to use "just receive 1.3% of VC funding" without stating what amount would warrant no usage of "just". It would help if these kind of equity driven articles made the effort of not counting on the naive heart of the reader to understand what is being said. Sure, a value is less than another value and a sex difference is mentioned, so the reader is put on the spot to immediately understand that the values should be different. But how different? Might as well count if there's an imbalance on north-south vs east-west crossings by sex on a city center, and then hope someone feels the need to conclude "but of course, they should be the same!".

shalmanese 6y ago
What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just? How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive?
- ominous 6y ago
  You assume the sex lens is how VC funds should be measured. > What do you think the value would be that wouldn't warrant putting just? If there were sex quotas for amount of funding and female founders got less than the law dictates, I'd understand a "just". If some known process we agree is fair and is expected to yield X but yields <X, I'd also not react at a "just". No such process exists for VC funding. Readers are being coerced into expecting a value to exist. > How much do you think is the "fair" amount women should receive? I did not realize VC funding was meant to be fair. Investors will have their reasons, startups will have their way of marketing themselves and people will have their network of contacts, to state 3 constraints. Have we reached the technocratic utopia where society is procedurally generated to be fair? No.

subtypefiddler 6y ago

When reading the source https://my.visme.co/view/01070kx3-unconventional-ventures-no https://my.visme.co/view/01070kx3-unconventional-ventures-no... the divide goes: Gender | % Companies (#) | % Funding All men | 85 (1473) | 88.81 All women| 6.35 (110) | 2.21 Mixed | 8.66 (150) | 8.98 Notes: - There is no disparity when it comes to number of rounds - The trend is decrease in funding from all men teams (-10 points compared to 2019) and increase mostly for mixed teams (+10 points) and women (+2 points) (their numbers don't add up to 100...)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mkl95 6y ago

The article seems to imply gender inequality is a major issue in Nordic countries. The truth is they are light years ahead of their European neighbours in the matter.

thinkingemote 6y ago
Gender equality paradox can explain this. But I'm not sure it applies to funding.

gjgjjsdoeklklkl 6y ago

Apart from the number games already commented on by others: I think the example of Theranos has shown that given the right subject, female founders have no issue collecting large sums of funding money. Those "poor female founders" articles always fail to mention that many startups (or businesses) by women tend to be in specific industry sectors, like fashion or childcare. So unfair that they can't get a unicorn evaluation for their "exclusive handbags" idea.

supergirl 6y ago

so sad that people nitpick on this article, trying to brush it off. for WHATEVER reasons, women got only 1% of total funding. is that not bad by itself? does it matter that the reason is that there were few women to begin with? that makes it even worse. at least if VC bias was the only cause then this bias would be confined to one domain and easier to fix.

danishdev 6y ago
"is that not bad by itself?" No
- supergirl 6y ago
  why not? women shouldn't be founders?
  - danishdev 6y ago
    Try harder with your demagoguery. This is not Twitter, these cheap tricks are not going to work.
mr_woozy 6y ago
are you even bothering to read and understand the comments here?
oytis 6y ago
If you believe that being a startup founder is an inherently good thing, then it's bad. But the former is not self-evident. Some pointed out that risk-weighted income of a startup founder might lower than that of someone on a conventional full-time job.

thinkingemote 6y ago

Gender equality paradox should tell us that in less gender equal societies women founders should get more funding. Anyone know if that study has been done?