GOOGLE ‘WHAT DOES a tech startup founder look like?’ and you get back a stream of images of mostly white, youngish males. In Ireland, it’s the same story – the portrait of the tech founder as a young man is alive and well.
This needs to change. Women have the ambition and enthusiasm for harnessing tech but the gap in funding they receive is stark, as per Tech Ireland’s report only one in four startups that raised funding in 2022 had a female founder.
Research has shown consistently that women in senior business positions mean more success and better quality customer service for businesses. TechFoundHer is a growing community of 500+ women tech founders. Our vision is an Ireland where we unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs to start, scale and grow tech companies for the benefit of our economy, society and wider world.
We have many examples of women entrepreneurs in Ireland doing exceptional work and innovating with tech to create products that contribute economic value, support jobs and also move society forward. Think of trailblazers like Dr Patricia Scanlon (Soapbox Labs), Ellen Gunning (Mettacomms) Claire McHugh (Axonista) and startup founders like Shana Chu of Tailr, Marie Toft of Emotionise and Christine Nsubuga – Noonan of Klëm.
Talent and ambition are of course spread evenly across men and women and different ethnic groups and backgrounds. But when we look at the facts about who is getting government funding and investment, there are glaring imbalances.
We’ve been hearing from our network, about the funding challenges women tech founders face and we’re asking questions on their behalf about where public enterprise funding is going. TechFoundHer’s parliamentary questions were recently raised by Deputy Louise O’Reilly with answers from Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney on the level of enterprise funding going to women founders.
Recent Dáil questions show that 75% of Enterprise Ireland funding goes to men-only founder teams. But we live in a revolutionary time and change is in the air. Transparency matters and collating and publishing data is a powerful tool for leveraging change. This month in the US, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 54. This new legislation requires venture capital firms in the state to report on amount of funding allocated to women entrepreneurs. This is a game-changer. We are calling on the Irish government to follow the example of Gov. Newson and mandate venture capital firms and all public agencies to allocate funds to enterprises to publish the amount of money going to women-led startups.
The gender startup funding gap
We also see from the data provided that in six years of data points – only in 2022 did Enterprise Ireland achieve their 30% target for female founded High Potential Start-ups. There were gaps in the data in relation to applicants and fudging over the definition with ‘female’ funded referencing teams with as little as 25% female founders – no data shared on women only teams.
Women founders are facing a glaring funding gap and it’s not just from Enterprise Ireland. In this year’s NDRC-funded accelerator (each successful company receives 100k), a shocking 85% (11 out of 13) of participants were men-only startup teams. None of the successful companies were women only.
The current system is broken for women. Ireland is bottom of the table in Europe for women founders securing funds for scale up businesses and not one university in Ireland is ranked globally in relation to the number of female alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital in the last decade.
The problem
Innovating with technology isn’t cheap and you typically need more time and investment in the early stages to create a tech product or platform, compared with a service type business. While every startup faces bumps along the road, I’m hearing how women tech founders are being underestimated because of their gender. This is backed up by recent research that shows funders invest in male founders and trust them more because of entrenched beliefs that tech founders are predominantly male.
The EU recognises the additional challenges women tech founders face because of bias and is piloting funding schemes to solely support women tech founders.
While there is growing awareness in Ireland about the shocking shortfall in funding going to women entrepreneurs – the debate about the entrenched bias women tech founders face and how to address this is just starting. There is a formulaic ‘group think’ approach to what types of sectors are funded and what an investable team looks like – usually male. The search for the mythical Unicorn (a company with a $1 billion turnover) is used as a rational for excluding impact-led companies and diverse founders.
The opportunity
Funding companies led by women is not only a moral imperative it’s also a proven catalyst for business innovation. Diversity is a superpower and research shows that diverse founder teams achieve better financial outcomes for investors. Dublin is a tech town but has recently dropped off the top 10 ranking for startup cities in Europe.
The big tech firms are dominating and we need more indigenous IT companies. Harnessing the talent and skills of women founders can help address this.
The percentage of females studying computer science at universities in Ireland is still hovering at only 20%. Many government enterprise funds make it a requirement that there is ‘tech expertise’ in a founding team which is in effect closing the door on women’s equal participation. The reality is that many successful tech companies have been founded by non-tech entrepreneurs who had the idea but didn’t actually get hands-on with coding. This ‘requirement’ needs to be removed.
Time for new thinking
Women make up 50% of the population but only receive a fraction of the share of enterprise funding. We need a target of 50% of government funding for women led start-ups – for all direct and indirect government funding via agencies and organisations allocating funding. Targets work. They challenge complacency and without them the easy, safe option is the default.
Steve Jobs said that ‘We’re here to put a dent in the Universe – otherwise why even be here?’ He understood that it’s a basic human need to want to make a difference. In order to enable women founders to have impact we need to make a dent on the unacceptable funding gap. Over the months ahead our campaign for answers and change continues.
Máirín Murray is a tech innovator and champion for women tech founders. She is a TEDx speaker and has been a judge, mentor and speaker at numerous startup events. She previously worked as a Senior Producer in the BBC working across digital platforms. She co-founded Tech for Good Dublin in 2017 and recently launched TechFoundHer – a 500+ community of women tech founders.
