The Conviction Trap: Investigating the Female Founder Funding Gap (Armory Square Ventures)

Summary

• Female founders raised a record $73.6 billion in the US last year.§1
• That figure corresponded to over 25% of total venture funding, up from 19% the prior year.§1
• Anthropic and Scale AI made up ~$30 billion of the total; without them female founders fared worse than the year before.§1
• All-female teams received only 2% of total funding, roughly what they got in 2019.§1
• A study sending 80,000 fictitious pitch emails found female founders received 9% more replies.§1

Key insights

1. The record $73.6 billion raised by US female founders looks like progress at first glance.§1
2. Excluding Anthropic and Scale AI, the trend line reverses and female founders fared worse than the prior year.§1
3. All-female teams received only 2% of total funding.§1
4. In a randomized pitch-email study of 80,000 emails, female founders received 9% more replies, so discrimination did not appear to occur in the inbox or pitch deck.§1
5. Investors often reward founder conviction and penalize founders who acknowledge uncertainty, a trait that disadvantages female founders in Q&A.§2