During the past week, talks about women's founders and venture capital in Australia have been promoted by Blackbird's latest portfolio data, which is reported by Simon Thomson of the Startup Daily, as well as Alien Stud's thoughts.
Both point to the important thing: the numbers we value, but the story they say depends on how we read them.
This transparency allows us to move from the story to the evidence – thanks to the large section of the team's brilliant work in Noga Edelistine and Equity Clare, who have fought openly and brought open general data.
'The chimney is just the beginning.
We often hear that the problem is just one of the “contract flow”. This, the founders of women reaching the VC pipeline are not yet. At the level, data supports it. Blackbird reports that all women founding teams make only 2 % of its investment, as is included through daily startups.
Blackbird's overall “hit rate” was given to 1-22 % (companies supported by companies supported by companies), which translates almost impossible to finance a All Women's team into the possibility of 0.02 % to 0.04 %.
As Simon share, it is a shot from about one -500 to 5,000. This is an amazing way to make it clear how tight the chimney is. But focusing only on these numbers is a bigger story.
Blackbird data reflects a very specific piece of entrepreneurship: high growth, venture scale startup, mostly in technology, software and frontier industries. In this ecosystem, women really. It is represented.
Yet in the broader economy, the picture looks different. According to ABS and the small business Ombudsman, about 34-35 % of small businesses in Australia are owned by women. These are neither irregularities nor outgoing. They represent hundreds of thousands of businesses that employ people, receive taxes and contribute to GDP.
On the contrary, an important point is: Women are starting companies, but many people are doing this outside of tight parameters that are usually important.
Are asking better questions
“What percentage of our investment went to the founders?” Instead of stopping, I want to look for and deal with some deep questions:
- Which structural barriers prevent women from founding venture on men's rates like men?
- How do these obstacles mix on gender, race, culture and class intersections?
- Why do we accept a system that guides more than 98 % of the venture capital dollar?
- Is another way to say “Dell Flu” the problem that we have not created a network to see the founders of women?
- Why do we continue to produce it as a “pipeline issue” instead of investors' design error?
- What would happen if the capital was allocated for the number of women starting companies instead of being default in a male -influenced networks?
These are the essential uncomfortable questions. Because if we do not ask them, we take the risk of treating inequality in venture as a matter of optics, when it is in fact a matter of economic performance.
Outline and learn in some middle
The encouraging news is that some investors have already shown what is possible when we deliberately design to add:
- Vishal Leap reports that 58 % of its portfolio is led by women, with a target of 60 % and is a mandate to invest at least $ 3 million annually in women's led projects.
- The Air Tree has shown that when its Explorer Angel program has ~ 50 % of women, the flow flow from women's founders increases by 20-30 %.
In contrast, the F5 clients are taking a different approach by focusing on the unbearable trace warns and the bad Karkhum 'Missing Central'. She is backing women who are making sustainable, expanded companies that cannot fit the tight mold of tech or mother -in -law, but are important for the fabric of our society and the economy. By supporting these women founders, the F5 challenges the binary of the “VC Scale or nothing” and makes the ROOM space of such business in which most women are in fact building.
These examples tell me that the challenge is not a shortage of women's founders, but there is a shortage of systems created to see, support and back them.
Construction foundations, not just a chimney
If we want to change these numbers, the question is not just how to expand the fireplace. This is for the construction of those foundations that allow more and more women to reach it:
- Extend routes from traditional networks to early capital
- Financial literacy, support support, and strengthening guidance.
- Systemic reforms advocate – from parenting departure policies to better exposure to women in tech and health.
- Supporting a funding model that complements more than just a “unicorn” – because not every business needs VC to be valuable.
The question is not how we fund women's founders, whether the funding model works for the kind of business they are building. Venture Capital is not broken, but it is better for a narrow purpose: rapid growth and mass. This leaves many founders and the entire sector out of scope. The answer is not to dig the VC, but rather to increase the capital stack to make revenue -based financing, equity, purchase and hybrid models more accessible. If we want different results, we need to change our ability to find, estimate and fund our ability, so the capital shows when and where it matters.
Equity is not just a percentage in any portfolio. This is about creating the conditions where women can find the first place, scale and lead companies.
My call action
Chimney is a useful metaphor, but this is not the whole story. If we want to close the gender funding gap, we should look deeply at the hidden stories between data points. After that, this question arises from “how many women's founders are funding”:
“Will our economy look like if every woman who wants to create a company would have been investing, co -operation and runway to do so?”
The writer's note
As a person who lives these dynamics, a woman working in tech and a desireing angel investor (thanks, Air Tree), I see how complicated the ecosystem is.
Data is important. Yes! So do the living experiences behind it. Now our opportunity is to build systems that both recognize.
- Senid Fitz Jerusiard is a technology and partner leader with two decades of experience in global companies, including Apple and Microsoft.
