Some progress, but needle not moving perceptively on funding for women-led companies The funnel of women and mixed founding teams is healthiest at pre-Seed stage, with 8% of funding rounds going to women-led and 21% to mixed teams when looking at companies that raised funding between 2021 and 2023. The equivalent shares start shrinking quickly when looking at the next stages of fundraising. While there has been some minor progress compared to companies that raised the three years before, where woman-only teams captured only 1.7% of Series B-plus funding, it has been incredibly slow paced. The small share of funding going to women-only teams is a clear sign that male and female founders are not held to the same expectations. Were both subject to equal opportunities, the share of funding by team gender mix would be more evenly distributed across all levels of company maturity. Interestingly, mixed gender founding teams are punching signi昀椀cantly above their weight both in funding cap- tured as well as by round volume. 15% of all startups founded had mixed teams in the last three years, yet they captured 6 percentage points more (21%) of the total pre-seed stage count, with the delta levelling out only by Series B and beyond. Share of round count (%) and share of capital invested (%) by founding team gender composition, 2018 to 2023 100 Women (2021 - 2023) Mixed (2021 - 2023) Men (2021 - 2023) 75 Women (2018 - 2020) t n u Mixed (2018 - 2020) o c 50 f o Men (2018 - 2020) % 25 0 d d d A d d d d A d e ee ee s n e ee ee s n d ie o d ie o n S S r y n S S r y u - e e u - e e f e b f e b n r S d n r S d U P n U P n B a B a s s ie ie er er S S 2018 - 2020 2021 - 2023 Notes: Data is as of 20 September 2023. Sources: Powered by | 98