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.
Female founders got 2% of all venture capital funding in 2017. Story by @valzarya: https://t.co/w6xpCFTN8Z pic.twitter.com/TypPcIZWTJ
— Polina Marinova (@polina_marinova) January 31, 2018
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.
Thanks for getting this out there @genemarks https://t.co/pKyxkbS34P
— Valentina Zarya (@valzarya) February 1, 2018
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.
Female founders got 2% of venture capital dollars in 2017 https://t.co/V9OAlT89eW
— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) February 1, 2018
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.