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Function of Beauty, personalized haircare startup, is backed by SoGal Ventures.
- More and more women are becoming entrepreneurs, but the venture capital world is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.
- Just about 9% of VC investors are women, all of whom are working hard to diversify the startup world and bring great ideas to the forefront.
- To celebrate Women's History Month, we're taking a look at five inspiring female-led VC funds and the women-led startups they're backing like Billie, Parachute, Reformation, and more.
The faces of entrepreneurship are changing. In 2017, there were 114% more women-owned businesses than 20 years prior. Between 2016 and 2018, the number of black-women-led startups doubled. Data from Lance Surety Bonds found that immigrants are almost twice as likely to start their own business as are their US-born counterparts.
All of this makes sense. Diversity matters in the workplace, and not just for the reasons we already know, like having a greater pool of lived experiences to build from. According to McKinsey, businesses with diverse workforces typically perform better financially, too.
Still, the venture capital (VC) world is overwhelmingly male-dominated. According to a recent study by Axios, women account for just about 9% of investors across U.S. venture capital firms. And, while female entrepreneurship is growing at a rapid rate, women are still not getting as much VC funding as their male counterparts. A BCG study found that while enterprises founded by women were given about half the investment as those founded by men, the female-founded companies generated double the amount of revenue than their male equivalents.
The gender investment gap is real, but it's clear that female entrepreneurs are still succeeding despite this. The good news - for investors and entrepreneurs, and alike - is there are plenty of women out there making it their job to get great female-founded businesses the funding they deserve. March is Women's History Month, so it feels particularly fitting to celebrate the intelligent women making waves in the VC industry.
Keep reading to learn more about five female-founded VC firms and the cool startups they've invested in:
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