The Gender Cap in Entrepreneurial Finance. We all need to discuss this.

Last week I joined The Gaitherin' at University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School to discuss the challenges facing female founders.

Chaired by Professor Eleanor Shaw OBE, our speakers included Saurabh Lall, Ana Stewart , Caren Holzman, John Anderson and Mint Ventures . Some of the major points that were made:

💰 Male angel investors outnumbered their female counterparts by more than 200%

⚖ Unbalanced investment: male-led companies received 62.9% of funding compared to 18.2% for female-led in 2023. When controlled for sector, revenues, performance, IP and qualifications, and where ventures are similar, men got more funding than women

🌍 It would also seem accelerators are exacerbating the problem globally.

AND ... the opportunity to have more female-led companies funded would add GBP250 billion to the UK economy, and $5 trillion to the global economy!!

There is also a huge economic case to be made on innovations in women's health and "Femtech"

As the discussion opened up to the room, we discussed what can be done about this. From my perspective (one of a few men in the room), we need to find solutions that include:

💡 More focus on supply-side solutions to reduce the system barriers that exist

💡 Men to be more aware of the biases and micro-biases that affect our approach to investing in female-led companies

💡 Investors: Actively encourage investors to have pre-defined evaluation criteria to reduce subjective evaluations.

💡 Investors: Be more open-minded to the economic opportunities that female-led companies can generate. This includes understanding risk and growth opportunities in a balanced way.

💡 Investors: Consistently assessing a team's potential - how they have improved, what their hashtag#culture is like - across ALL startups

💡 All of Us: We need to think differently to leverage the younger generations' instinctual understanding to be more inclusive and fair

There is a LOT more to be done by EVERYONE, so these events are important and need to include more men. 

❗ MEN - We need more Male Allyship and introspection. 

I look forward to working with everyone involved to plot our hashtag#PathwayForward. I hope to have some of my own ideas actioned very soon. Stay tuned. Ideas and comments welcomed.