#GAReads | Funding for female founders increased in 2019 — but only to 2.7%
photo credit: Austin Distel, via Unsplash
“Funding for female founders increased in 2019 — but only to 2.7%”:
How should female founders reflect on 2019? From a statistical perspective, the year could certainly be seen as step forward: the share of VC dollars that flowed into startups founded by a woman or a group of women crept up over 2019, hitting $3.54 billion, or 2.7% of total investment.
But a more holistic look at the venture capital landscape puts that stat in a slightly different perspective. Consider WeWork, arguably the most notorious startup flameout of the year, if not the decade. In 2019, investment juggernaut SoftBank poured at least $5 billion into the imploding co-working company. That's about $1.5 billion more than the total VC investment in all female-founded companies combined during the same period, according to data provided to Fortune by PitchBook, a company that tracks data from the venture capital and private equity industries.