.png)
3 months ago
2
It pays to have a female founder—literally. The companies women create generate more revenue per dollar raised and burn less capital, according to a new report from Female Founders Fund. But female founders still lag behind their male peers in several key fundraising metrics.
Last year, startups with all-female founding teams received only 2.1 percent of venture capital funding, according to the report. In 2014, that figure was slightly higher: 2.4 percent of funding went to all-female teams.
And yet, according to the report, female-founded companies generate 78 cents of revenue for every dollar raised, compared to just 31 cents for male-founded startups. They also “consistently” burn 15 percent less capital, it says. In 2024, startups with female founders burned $270,000 per month on average, while U.S. startups overall burned $320,000 per month. “Female founders continue to do more with less,” the report says, “building lean, high-impact companies in a capital-conscious way.”
Female Founders Fund created the report using data from PitchBook, Crunchbase, Venture Capital Journal, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, the Harvard Kennedy School, Insead, and Harvard Business Review, and research by Female Founders Fund MBA associate Varna Vasudevan.
“Obviously, we have a long way to go,” says Anu Duggal, founding partner at Female Founders Fund. But she adds that “there have been some pretty meaningful improvements” since she co-founded the New York City-based fund in 2014. The proportion of funding going to female-founded startups has nearly doubled in the past decade, according to the report, jumping from 11.8 percent in 2014 to 20.6 percent in 2024. Plus, the percentage of women in decision-making positions at VC firms rose over that time period from 6 to 17.
Female founders have also made strides in terms of total deals, initial public offerings, and exits. More than 800 all-female teams landed VC deals last year, compared to only 479 in 2014. And the number of women-led companies filing for initial public offerings increased from just two to 14 over the decade.
Duggal’s fund has seen wins over the years, too. “We’ve had multiple exits since launching the fund,” she says. That list includes BentoBox, which Fiserv reportedly acquired for $300 million; Billie, which Edgewell acquired for $310 million; and Eloquii, which Walmart acquired for $100 million.
Now, Duggal says Female Founders Fund has begun backing “second-time exited founders.” She points to the fund’s recent investment in Eloquii co-founder Mariah Chase’s new retail technology company, Ekyam.ai. This “cyclical nature” of investment, Duggal says, is exactly what she sought to create for female founders when she created the fund.
The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Power Partner Awards is tonight, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.
