Statistics have long shown that female-led companies perform better with female-led teams generating 35% higher return on investment than all-male teams. Additionally, female-founded startups in the U.S. in 2021 reached $58.8 billion in exits, up 144% from 2020, which is more than the 102% increase from the broader startup exits over the same time frame.
That said, female founders still face steeper challenges when it comes to getting their startups funded than their male counterparts. So far in 2021, startups founded solely by women or co-founded by a woman and man represent 25.3% of all VC deals in the U.S.
Given Work-Bench’s mission as an enterprise software VC firm to invest in exceptional founders, we have anecdotally seen that there are fewer female-led enterprise startups.
In this report, we collate data from our public Women Founders of Enterprise Startups Database, which we first launched 4 years ago in 2018, and compared it to PitchBook and Crunchbase data. We found:
➡️ READ THE FULL REPORT HERE ⬅️ to explore our in-depth data on where, what, and how many female founders are actually gaining traction in enterprise software, as well as tactical solutions the industry can do to improve these numbers.
➡️ Read more in The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch.
