Communications of the ACM
'Over-Mentored and Under-Capitalized': Scant Funding for Female Entrepreneurs
Panelists' advice for founders including avoiding "fake it until you make it" approaches.
Credit: Getty Images
The pressures and biases that lead to women entrepreneurs raising a barely-there 1.1% share of total venture capital funding was a focus of the Diversity Tech Summit 2022 in London this week.
Women are "over-mentored and under-capitalized," said Deepali Nangia, partner at investor Speedinvest, in a panel discussion. She and Saloni Bhojwani, co-founder of Pink Salt Ventures, explained that women founders tend to be questioned far more about risk and downside than their male counterparts, and said this materially affects funding levels.
Whilst accelerators like Founders Factory offer coaching in their accelerators programs, both Nangia and Bhojwani were emphatic that it was the system that needed to change rather than women simply being coached to pitch like men. Male investors need to understand that "there's more than one way to explain a business," Bhojwani said.
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