{"id":31207,"date":"2025-07-29T06:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/31207\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T06:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:34:07","slug":"what-we-could-solve-by-backing-more-women-founders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/31207\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Could Solve by backing more women founders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine all the things we could solve if we could close the massive gender gap in private investment going to founders in Australia. <\/p>\n

Just 15 per cent of private investment went to founding teams with at least one female founder in 2024, according to the State of Startup Funding Report<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And just 2 per cent went to all female founding teams. <\/p>\n

This is a gender gap we\u2019ve long discussed on Women\u2019s Agenda<\/a>. But unlike other gender gaps we follow, including the national pay gap and superannuation gap, this is one that has rarely ever moved in the right direction. Indeed, this gender gap has gotten worse in recent years. <\/p>\n

The lack of progress comes despite plenty of rhetoric about investors\u2019 desire to close this gap, and despite various desires to help from goverments and supplies. It comes despite numerous stories and programs aimed at teaching or \u201cfixing\u201d women to engage a certain way with the system. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we wanted to dedicate a series to discussing evidence-based solutions for closing this gender pay gap, via a special six-part podcast series and dedicated section on Women\u2019s Agenda under the banner of What We Could Solve<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The series follows dozens of interviews with founders, investors, academics and others across the startup ecosystem. <\/p>\n

It aims to reset the problem to being one about what Australia misses in investors failing to reach more diverse founders. <\/p>\n

And it aims to consider just What We Could Solve: in tech, climate, healthcare, research and more, as well as the economic opportunity, jobs, investor return on investment and much more that can be accessed. <\/p>\n

In Australia, Boston Consulting Group research in partnership with the Cherie Blair Foundation<\/a> estimated the economic opportunity of boosting the number of female entrepreneurs to parity with men would be worth between $71 and $145 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the UK, the Investing in Women Code initiative analysed 2024 data and found that all-female founding teams outperformed the market by 1 per cent, while mixed gender teams outperformed it by 10 per cent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, as we know from our research and work on Women\u2019s Agenda, women-founded businesses create solutions to challenges that often male founders \u2013 and therefore often male VCs \u2013 don\u2019t necessarily see the value in, especially in women\u2019s health, and across challenges facing the care economy, such as in aged care, early childhood education and nursing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In part one of What We Could Solve, we confront the challenge through the perspectives of several founders at various stages, learning about their experiences and identifying some of the key issues they perceive as\u00a0contributing to this gap. These founders later shared more on some of the solutions. <\/p>\n

The stats are shocking. The lack of progress is disappointing. But this series What We Could Solve isn\u2019t about merely calling out the problem. Rather, this series hopes to be a call to action for everyone involved in the startup ecosystem to see the massive opportunities ahead, and the very real evidence-based options available to help make it happen. <\/p>\n

Some of are some of the key takeaways and founders featured in part one: <\/p>\n

\"NogaNoga Edelstein, founder, UrbanYou. Investor and advisor to startups. <\/p>\n

Noga Eldestein left corporate life with her co-founder, Elke Keely, to launch the on-demand cleaning service business, UrbanYou. They became one of a small minority of all-female founding teams to raise money and later to exit the business. <\/p>\n

Noga outlines some of the challenges they experienced raising money, as well as the challenges she sees female founders experiencing in 2025. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of data that says women are asked prevention questions, men are asked promotion questions, and that certainly was our experience. Everyone wanted to pick on the ways it was going to fail rather than get excited in the ways it was going to succeed,\u201d she shares in the podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly didn\u2019t raise anywhere near as much as our male counterparts, and the valuation we got was nowhere near as high as those male counterparts as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

While Noga is now supporting diverse founders across the startup ecosystem, she worries about the feedback loop those who face additional challenges in pitching for funding take on. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really daunting, and that feeds go into this loop of, like, are women going to go back and do it again? Are they going to become second time founders and put themselves through that journey again? Which just feeds into this archetype of, you know, there\u2019s far less women second time founders, investors like to back second time founders, and it just, it\u2019s perpetual.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"KirstinKirstin Hunter, CEO of Birchal<\/p>\n

Kirstin Hunter has viewed the startup ecosystem from different perspectives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She has been a co-founder and executive in several startups, and she has run the Techstars accelerator as managing director. Kirstin is now CEO of Birchal, Australia\u2019s largest equity crowdfunding platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Noga, she has witnessed this expectation of change when it comes to closing the gender funding gap. But it hasn\u2019t happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen just how difficult it is for women-founded teams and diverse teams, that don\u2019t look like your classic university-educated white male software engineering founder, really struggle to get investors to see them as credible investments. <\/p>\n

Working with around a dozen startups a year at TechStars, where they would typically buck the trend by seeing the majority of their cohort having at least one female founder, Kirstin notes dramatic differences she heard between how female and male founders resported their experiences with investors. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was in the questions that women founders would get asked compared to the questions that male founders get asked,\u201d Kirstin says on the podcast. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe most ridiculous example that I have, which is a serious question that one of my women founders got \u2026 they were literally asked, \u2018If Steve Jobs were to come back from the dead, and because he\u2019s dead, he doesn\u2019t have to follow international laws and conventions, how would you compete?\u2019 Hang on, are you literally asking if zombie Steve Jobs was running a competitive company?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirstin believes both concious and unconcious bias is occuring. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the data shows that women-founded businesses are more capital effective, produce stronger returns, then it should be on the VCs to change the way they receive pitches, rather than on the women leaders to change how they\u2019re giving the pitches. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think I\u2019m a little bit sceptical of this view, because I\u2019ve now been working in various roles for 20 years, and I\u2019ve been hearing these messages about women need to just do things differently, and then we\u2019ll break through. If we just \u201clean i\u201dn more, if we just learn to be more confident in meetings, if we just act more like men, then we\u2019ll be promoted! But if that were true, we would see a much higher representation of women as CEOs, on boards, in investment positions, in successful founding positions, and we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PreetiPreethi Mohan, Founder of NiceTo & Co-founder of F2F & Press Play Ventures of Overnight Success.<\/p>\n

Preethi Mohan is a three-time founder who now advises, coaches, mentors and invests in startups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She shared some of the added challenges facing founders from diverse backgrounds and the notable differences in their stories, especially, regarding \u201cPrevention Questions\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI started noticing the differences in what the stories they were telling me versus the stories that people from the majority funded sort of backgrounds tell me, and they were vastly different the experiences they were going through,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so really started researching and digging into it more, and then thought, I think I can solve this in a way that no one else is at the moment. We need more and more of an effort in solving this. It can be experiences of sexual harassment, and things like that from investors. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be experiences in the types of questions they get, including women getting more of those \u201cprevention questions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"JemiJemi Jeng, Founder of Penny. <\/p>\n

Jemi Jeng has just launched her startup Penny<\/a> in the weeks we spoke for this series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u2019s passionate about the business she\u2019s solving which empowers women with financial literacy and confidence to\u00a0 build wealth, and knows full well the challenge it\u2019s solving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is self-funded, knowing how difficult it would be to access VC funding for an impact business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is open about how challenging it\u2019s been getting started.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And sh outlines another essential aspect to consider when it comes to founders: the vast differences people have in their ability to fail and quickly move on to the next thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have that option to fail. You have to think twice, three times as hard about a decision before you make it. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust you\u2019re thinking about the finances. You\u2019re thinking about, you know, the impact on the growth of your business long term, the reputation, all these sorts of things that you\u2019re weighing up all the time that you know another founder who might have more resources or for whatever reason, just isn\u2019t pressed in the same way,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

These founders share more in Part One of What We Could Solve, currently available in the Women\u2019s Agenda podcast feed, including on Apple and Spotify. Later, they share more on some of the solutions they believe can be deployed for actually addressing these issues and making a difference on the gender pay gap. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine all the things we could solve if we could close the massive gender gap in private investment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-31207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}