EY study
Startup founders always get less money than men
In Germany, women receive an average of 16 percent less salary than men. The gender-specific gap is much more blatant when financing start-ups.
Founders from startups receive much less risk capital than young companies founded by men or mixed teams. This is shown by a study by the exam company EY, which is available to the dpa news agency. And the gap continues to open, because the already very small proportion of women in start -ups halved again last year.
In 2023, almost two percent of the venture capital went to startups that only had founders. In 2024, the proportion was just below one percent. According to EY calculations, only 43 million euros flowed to startups founded by women alone – 58 percent less than in the previous year. In 2023, risk capital providers had set 102 million euros in young companies with an exclusively female founding team.
Startups, whose founding teams consisted only of men, received venture capital of 6.2 billion euros in 2024, which corresponds to a share of almost 88 percent. That was 1.3 billion euros more than 2023. Young companies with mixed founding teams received a total of 834 million euros (almost twelve percent) of the risk capital in 2024.
Thomas Prüver, partner at EY, said that the growing gender gap in the startup ecosystem for 2024 means “step back instead of progress”. “And of all things in the year in which Germany’s young companies were able to defy the numerous market challenges and have stabilized after a valley sole in recent years.” While the investment sums in German startups had risen again as a whole, purely female founding teams could not have benefited from this update: “They received significantly less than in the previous year.”
Gap greater with large sums
When it comes to large sums, the imbalance among investments between the sexes becomes even clearer. According to Ey, the proportion of women was 10.6 percent at all startups that received money in 2024. With the startups that received a financing of at least 50 million euros, the proportion of women in founding teams was only 7.1 percent.
The proportion of women in founding teams is higher in certain industries than in others. There are relatively high women’s shares in the sectors Agrar-Tech (25 percent), e-commerce (23 percent) and education (21.6 percent). However, the proportion of women is very low in the sectors software & analytics (7.4 percent), finance/insurance (4.5 percent), energy (3.2 percent) and hardware (2.9 percent). “For technology startups that currently collect a lot of capital and are the most important growth engine in the scene, women are very rarely represented in the founding teams,” said Prüver.
Franziska Teubert, managing director at the startup association, said the falling figures showed that the potential in Germany was not fully exploited. “Founders face structural hurdles: be it in the area of compatibility of entrepreneurship and family, access to networks or capital. Investors, startup ecosystem and politics are equally required to reduce hurdles and promote founders. We need a various founding landscape to develop the best solutions and products.”
dpa
Source: Stern
