{"id":849890,"date":"2023-06-02T15:26:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T13:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/talenti.pl\/materialy\/__trashed\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:57:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T11:57:20","slug":"__trashed","status":"publish","type":"materialy","link":"https:\/\/talenti.pl\/en\/materials\/__trashed\/","title":{"rendered":"Does gender matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Start-ups, often working on innovative digital products, together with the Venture Capital (VC) funds that invest in them, form a dynamically evolving ecosystem. What role do women play in this rapidly changing environment? Can their voice guide the development of solutions and improvements, or do they rather remain in the shadows? Let’s take a look at what the latest reports and research regarding this sector have to say about this – both from a local and global perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start-ups<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Teams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Women are in a distinct minority in teams creating cutting-edge digital products: in half of Polish start-ups, they make up only a quarter of the team or less. Only in 21% of such entities, do women make up more than half of the team ( the “Polish Start-ups 2022” report).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female founders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Depending on the study, the global percentage of start-ups founded by women ranges from 15 to 20% (Startup Genome, 2023, Statista, 2022). We lack analogical detailed data on the Polish start-up ecosystem, however it is known that one in three companies in our country is established by a woman (PARP, 2022)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among deep-tech companies, which account for approximately 25% of European start-ups (European Commission, 2023), women run one in four start-ups of this type in Poland (Aper Ventures, 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Only 2.1% of VC funding for U.S. start-ups in the first quarter of 2023 went to ventures created by women (Pitchbook, 2023). In the case of Central and Eastern Europe, the percentage is even lower: in 2020, it was just one per cent of the investment value (Funding in the CEE Report, 2021). Then across Europe in 2022, start-ups created by women benefitted from only 0.9% of the investments made by VC funds at the time (Pitchbook, 2023). Globally, the percentage has remained at a similar level for years – both in 2010 and 2019, 3% of investments went to startups founded by women (A Decade in Review: Funding to the Female Founders, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018 alone, U.S. start-ups with male founders raised $147 billion from VC investors; this is more than the amount that correspondijng ventures created by women raised altogether between 2000 and 2018 (C. West, G. Sundaramurthy, 2020). This phenomenon is referred to as the gender financing gap, meaning that female founders of start-ups are less likely to raise funding than male applicants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inequalities in the approach to feminised start-ups are already apparent at the stage of presenting ideas to investors. According to an analysis of interviews conducted by investors between 2010 and 2016, women are more often asked how they will solve a crisis situation and manage business risks, while men are rather asked about the potential of their venture (Kanze, 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the reluctance of investors towards female-led start-ups is not due to the lower profitability of these ventures. The investment company First Round analysed 300 ventures it had backed financially over ten years of their existence. It turns out that start-ups founded by women perform 63% better than those founded by men (First Round, 2015). Other studies also show that female founders of start-ups generate up to twice as much return on investment as male founders (Aernoudt, De San Jose, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data on the performance of more than 350 start-ups supported by Mass Challenge, a US-based network of accelerators for start-ups, shows that start-ups founded by women generate 10% higher cumulative revenue over a five-year period (Abouzahr et al., 2018). Every dollar invested in start-ups founded by women generated 78 cents, while the same amount for start-ups created by men generated only 31 cents (Abouzahr et al., 2018). In the case of start-ups founded from Central and Eastern Europe, those founded by women also generate 96% more revenue per euro of funding than start-ups founded by men (Funding in the CEE Report, 2021). Finally, female-founded start-ups are characterised by better cost control, spending 25% less per month than the market average (Female Founders Fund, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis of investments made by VCs over the period of 2009-2019 also indicates a trend of increasing start-up sales (and therefore quicker returns on investment) for female founders than for male founders (Pitchbook, 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venture capital funds<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The importance of VC funds for entrepreneurial development is evidenced by the fact that their investment has supported 43% of public American companies since 1979 (Stanford Business, 2015).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women in VC teams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to the first survey of investment teams conducted in Poland in 2021 in thirty-two PE\/VC firms, women represented 23% of the workforce in VC funds. They occupy 9% of management positions, 24% of middle management positions and 41% of junior roles (Level 20, PSIK, Abris Capital Partners, 2021). In 21% of the examined VC teams, there was not a single woman (Level 20, PSIK, Abris Capital Partners, 2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These teams are characterised by an underrepresentation of women in Europe, as well: they account for 15% of VC fund managers (10% in Central and Eastern Europe), while in teams making investment decisions, four out of five are men (IDC European Women in Venture Capital, 2022). In the U.S., women account for 16.1% of VC investment decision-makers (Pitchbook, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women in VC teams have access to smaller funds: in the case of Central and Eastern Europe, they decide on 2% of funds, while for the rest of Europe the percentage is 4-6% (IDC European Women in Venture Capital, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investment in start-ups founded by women<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Diversifying VC fund teams is key in terms of increasing investment for start-ups founded by women. An analysis of ninety thousand U.S. start-ups that received VC funding between 2000 and 2018 shows that female investors are twice as likely as their male counterparts to invest in start-ups founded by women (C. West, G. Sundaramurthy, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IT industry and new technologies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Among the female IT employees who took part in the survey in 2023, nearly half of them work in roles that do not require programming – they are primarily software testers and project managers (Women in IT, 2023). Among the surveyed women, only 22.5% have a degree in IT or a related field, while 43% have found their way into the industry after a rebranding or career change (Women in IT, 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female programmers in Poland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A survey of Polish female programmers in 2023 was completed by more than ten thousand people, 18% of whom were women (IT Community Survey, 2023). Women among those studying IT in Poland, constitute a similar share of 16% (Women at Polytechnics, 2022). According to Eurostat data, in 2021, women accounted for 16.1% of the workforce in the ICT sector in Poland (ICT specialists in employment, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital corporations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite implementing measures to increase team diversity, global tech giants are still far from perfect. Women make up 37.5% of total teams at Google, and 35.9% of those in managerial roles at the company (Diversity Annual Report 2022). Meta however, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has 37.1% women in their teams (Embracing Change Through Inclusion: Meta’s 2022 Diversity Report). They account for 36.7% leadership roles (Embracing Change Through Inclusion: Meta’s 2022 Diversity Report).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slack, one of the most popular instant messaging services, reports that women make up 44.9% of its teams, with less than 30% in managerial roles and 33.4% in technical roles (Diversity at Slack, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spotify, founded in Stockholm, stands out against this background for its high proportion of female employees – they make up 45.7% of the company’s workforce and hold 41.9% of management positions (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n