Women Who Startup

1%

of US venture capital went to women-only founding teams in 2025.

Source: PitchBook All In Report — US, 2025

In Q1 2026, that number fell to 0.6%.

Source: PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor — Q1 2026

Scroll

This is what 0.6% looks like.

EACH SQUARE = 1% OF US VC ALLOCATION TO FEMALE-ONLY TEAMS — Q1 2026

A decade. No movement. And then the floor gave way.

Sources: PitchBook All In Report (2017–2025); PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor (Q1 2026)

~40%

of US small businesses are women-owned.

1%

of US VC goes to female-only teams.

Small business is the backbone of the US economy. Women are the backbone of small business. Venture capital is not following the data.

This is not a talent issue.

Women-led companies outperform on ROI. Women are inventing, founding, building, and running profitable businesses at scale. The data is overwhelming. The capital is not.

THE FUNDING DATA

Female-founded US startups raised a record $73.6B in 2025 — but a handful of AI megadeals (Anthropic, Scale AI, Thinking Machines) account for most of it.

Strip out three AI megadeals and the rest of the female-founded ecosystem is essentially flat year-over-year.

PitchBook–NVCA

All-female founding teams captured 0.6% of US VC deal value in Q1 2026; 77.9% of first-time financings went to all-male teams.

Female-only founding teams received roughly 1% of US VC dollars in 2024 — the lowest share since 2017.

Prior-year benchmark: stage-by-stage breakdowns of US VC to women-founded companies, showing the 2023 baseline before the 2024 drop.

Independent reporting on PitchBook's finding: all-female teams hit a multi-year low in 2024.

Funding to women-founded startups fell ~12% in 2024, in line with the broader market downturn.

Globally, funding to women-led tech startups fell 11% to $29.6B in 2024.

THE PERFORMANCE DATA

Boston Consulting Group

Women-founded startups generate 78¢ in revenue per dollar of funding vs. 31¢ for men — more than 2× the ROI.

First Round Capital

Companies with at least one female founder outperformed all-male teams by 63% in First Round's portfolio.

Kauffman Fellows Research Center

Gender-inclusive founding teams generate 3.3× the median realized multiple of all-male teams.

International Finance Corporation (World Bank)

Funds with gender-balanced senior investment teams generated 10–20% higher net IRRs.

McKinsey & Company

Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to outperform on profitability.

THE SMALL BUSINESS DATA

Wells Fargo / Ventureneer / WIPP

Women own 14 million US businesses — 39.1% of all firms — employing 12.2M people and generating $2.7T in revenue.

US Small Business Administration — Office of Advocacy

Women own more than 12 million US businesses and employ over 10.7 million workers.

US Small Business Administration

From 2019–2023, women-owned businesses grew at a rate 94% faster than men-owned businesses.

JPMorgan Chase Institute

Women-owned businesses survive at the same rate as men's despite lower revenues and slower revenue growth driven by access-to-capital gaps.

Babson College — Diana International Research Institute

Women are equal or majority owners of 45% of all US firms but receive a fraction of growth capital.

THE BIAS RESEARCH

Harvard Business Review

VCs ask men promotion-focused questions and women prevention-focused questions, predicting 7× funding gaps.

Academy of Management Journal

Peer-reviewed evidence that questioning bias accounts for a substantial portion of the startup funding gap.

Harvard Business School Working Paper

VC partners with daughters hire more female partners — and those firms outperform.

All Raise × Crunchbase

Women remain a small minority of US VC decision-makers (checkwriters) at firms with >$25M AUM.

Equitable representation in VC is treated as a competitive advantage, not a charity case.

In 2025, female-founded US startups raised a record $73.6 billion.

3

AI megadeals — Anthropic, Scale AI, and Mira Murati's Thinking Machines — account for the majority of that total.

Strip them out, and the rest of the female-founded ecosystem is essentially flat year-over-year.

Sources: PitchBook 2025 All In Report; Fortune — March 2026

In 2025, US all-female founding teams raised $3.2 billion across 794 deals. All-male teams raised $191.1 billion across 10,048 deals.

All-male teams raised 21% more capital than the prior year. All-female teams raised 22% less.

In Q1 2026, all-female teams captured 0.6% of US VC deal value. 77.9% of first-time financings went to all-male teams.

Sources: PitchBook All In Report — US, 2025; PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor — Q1 2026