Fortune Magazine reports women received 2.2% of venture capital in 2017

Fortune Magazine reports women received just 2.2% of venture capital in 2017

Female founders received 2.2% of venture capital funds in 2017 according to research published by Fortune Magazine, and that actually represents a bump on previous years.

Data collected by PitchBook shows that all-women teams received just $1.9 billion of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year. By way of comparison, all-male teams received about $66.9 billion, or nearly 80% of the dollars invested, and the remaining funds were raised by mixed-gender teams, and/or teams where the gender of the founders wasn’t specified.

The size of the gap between funds invested in men and women pours cold water over any hope that substantive change is afoot in the world of venture capital.

Women were left to share a 2.2% slice of pie, which is minuscule and dwarfed by the 80% chunk of the pie men were free to share.

But consider these findings which were also uncovered by Fortune’s Valentina Zarya :

  • In 2016, female founders raised just $1.4 billion—or 1.9% of total VC funding.
  • With the exception of 2014, 2017 marks the largest percentage of total venture dollars that has gone to female founders since PitchBook started tracking the data in 2006.
  • The largest round invested in a woman-led startup was $165 million (Moda Operandi’s Series G).
  • The largest round invested in a male-led company (WeWork, also a Series G) was $3 billion.
  • Even the tenth-largest deal invested in all men comes in at half a billion dollars which is four times larger than the largest round raised by a women-led company.

There is no way around these numbers without recognising that VC and the land of start-ups remain not merely dominated by men so much as drenched.

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