4 things you should know about women and entrepreneurship
And the data to back you up
Tomorrow, the White House will be holding The United State of Women Summit. I won’t be attending, but I will be going to the San Francisco Women Startup Challenge Pitch Competition, so my mind, like many others, is on women and entrepreneurship this week.
Here’s the skinny on what you should know about women and entrepreneurship:
1. Investment: women take half as much, less of the time
On average, women have half as much money as men when starting a business: $75,000 as compared to $135,000 for men, according to the 2007 US Census Survey of Business Owners (SBO). According to Golden Seeds more than 30% of women don’t take investment at all, while less than 20% of men could say the same.
2. Women don’t get funded equally
Women are a quarter as likely as men to receive venture capital funding, and half as likely to get a bank loan, according to the SBO.
3. Women fund women
15% of funded VC companies have a woman on the executive team (that’s 985 out of 6,793 companies between 2011–2013). Since VC firms with women on the team are more likely to invest in women-led companies, that’s doubly bad news.
4. Women profit
According to Illuminate, women-lead companies ran leaner, seeing roughly the same rate of return with 1/3 the burn rate. And according to the Kaufmann Foundation’s 2013 study, “Women in Technology: Evolving, Ready to Save the World” suggested that investments in women-lead companies had a 35% higher rate of return.
(…and don’t get me started on the amazing things black women are doing.)
I hope this gets you in the spirit for tomorrow, whichever event you are more excited about!
