Why do we need gender diversity and a female founders and funders report in VC?
Of all the global venture funding in 2020, only 2.3% went to women-led startups. Progress for female representation in VC is flat if not decreasing, with just 12% of decision makers at VC firms being women. In 2021, our industry is far away from equal representation, showing the urgent need to better support women in VC and close the gender gap.
We hope that the discussions raised with a report like the CEE-Report 2021 inspire our industry to encourage more women to found startups and GPs, and more LPs to back diverse teams and women-led companies.
We are honoured to be a supporting partner to European Women in VC for their newly launched report “Funding in the CEE Region.” The report sheds light on the fundraising and investment conditions in Central and Eastern Europe through the lens of gender diversity and positive impact, bringing attention to the gender gap and calling to action those who can drive change.
The Female Founders and Funders report clearly reveals the lack of gender diversity in CEE startups and VC firms, highlighting the huge untapped potential of women in VC:
– 1% of funding goes to women-founded startups in CEE in 2020
– 2x outperformance by female founders in the region
– <1% of capital managed by all-women GP teams in CEE
#ESGinVC and Diversity & Inclusion
We at Blue Future Partners believe that being accountable for your investments via clearly stated ESG principles is what sets a good investors apart. And that Diversity & Inclusion is one of the most important elements of a good ESG practice, not only because it has been proven to be a driver for better financial outcomes and long-term value creation. We welcome the Female founders and funders report as a step in that direction.
As fund of funds investors, we strongly believe that the needed change regarding Diversity & Inculsion can only be sparked by LPs asking their GPs the right questions before making funding commitments and actually making their investment decisions dependent on the answers they receive. We should not even need to go as far as to argue that giving female GPs more firepower will lead to better financial outcomes: it should be enough for all of us to encompass more inclusive strategies as it will help us to achieve SDG 5 and 10.
