Source - https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get
TL;DR - VCs are biased against women during pitches.
Helpfulness -5
Topic Tags - Women in VC, pitching, bias, statistics, current VC, problem
Questions answered:
- What Biases do women in VC face?
- Where is VC headed?
- Why is there so little female funding?
Summary:
- Women only get 2% of VC funding but own 38% of businesses. (2017)
- This was predicted to change as more women went into VC, but even as more women took positions in VC, the funding gap became bigger.
- Promotional questions “focused on hopes, achievements, advancement, and ideals.”
- Prevention questions “is concerned with safety, responsibility, security, and vigilance.”
- 67% of the questions men were asked was promotional. 66% of the questions women were asked was prevention.
- Promotional questioned people raise 7x prevention questioned people. $16.8m v $2.3m
- Each preventional question ~$3.8m less raised
- “We also noticed that the majority of entrepreneurs (85%) responded to questions in a manner that matched the question’s orientation: A promotion question begets a promotion answer, and a prevention question begets a prevention answer.”
- positive feedback loop, VCs follow up with same type questions
- This is a big deal because pitchers mush present a ‘home run’ scenario, not a ‘you won’t lose money scenario’
- These findings are re-creatable with similar results