21 Percent of Early VC Capital Goes to Teams With Women Founders

We've all heard the stat "2% of venture dollars go to female founders". But what if we look at funding by CEO gender instead?

The 2% stat referenced above is actually specific to women-only founding teams. If you include teams with both genders as founder (mixed-gender teams), the percentage of cash raised by teams with women cofounders actually grows to about 21%. Not amazing, but much better than 2%.

But is that the right way to judge venture funding - or should we instead look at who is the CEO?

In our Annual Equity Report for 2024, which breaks down equity and venture funding by gender, race, and ethnicity, we dug into that specific question.

Data below looks at Seed and Series A fundraising on Carta over the past 3 years. The color of the segment refers to the founding team mix (men-only, mixed, or women-only) and the columns show male vs female CEO.

𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹, 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗖𝗘𝗢𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝟭𝟭% 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱+𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰

You can clearly see that the percentage of cash going to male CEOs in mixed-gender teams is higher than the share going to female CEOs in every year. Usually the gap is rather large.

Dispiriting, but probably unsurprising.

The report does show some slightly more positive trends if you look at funding beyond Seed and Series A, which is heartening. But the disparities persist across many stats. Female CEOs raise less cash per round and at lower valuations than male CEOs basically across every venture stage.

25 charts on the demographics of VC-backed startups, their founders, and the people they hire in the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eAvGRmZm

#startups #venturecapital #womenCEO #VC #founders