Who gets VC funding?

2023 has been a year to forget for many in startups. Less funding. Fewer rounds. More layoffs. More stress.

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And something else—a less equitable startup ecosystem.

Every year since 2018, we've combed through our own pool of aggregated, anonymized data to pick out trends in who receives equity, who receives funding, and how the opportunity of startups is distributed across race, ethnicity, and gender.

So how did 2023 go? Not great.

Some lowlights

The share of funding, from both pre-seed convertibles and priced equity rounds, going to women-only founding teams declined. The same was true for Black and Hispanic founders.

Women make up only 9% of engineering executives hired at startups from 2019-2023.

The percentage of non-white hires across all startup positions, which had been gradually increasing over the past 8 years, fell in 2023.

Please read our full Carta Equity Report for 2023 for an in-depth review of the data.

There were some bright spots. Younger founders are much more likely to be diverse than their older peers. Founders of Asian descent saw their relative share of funding increase gently this year.

But in general, if progress towards a more inclusive startup world is "two steps forward, one step back"—2023 was the step back.

Here's to 2 steps forward next year.

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Peter Walker

Carta Insights