money Here's how female-led startups can succeed in 2021
Women continue to take seats at the table in the male-dominated venture capital world, and one expert shared how the tech industry can correct its inequities and build a deeper pipeline of female talent.
“It's not actually about simply having more female CEOs [and] board members,” Pippa Lamb, partner at Sweet Capital, a London-based venture capital firm shared on Yahoo Finance Live. “It's also about having more female engineers and the whole tech stack. Also, attracting more female talent, which I know is out there.”
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Lamb calls the lack of female representation a “systemic issue” that runs through tech-driven start-ups reaching from venture capital firms to female founders, partners, and investors. Female-led startups received 2.3% of venture capital funding in 2020, according to a report conducted by Crunchbase.
But the reason why companies aren’t making strategic and diverse hires isn’t for a lack of talent, Lamb explained. “I see it every day through my job,” she said, adding that Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd’s recent IPO success should serve as “a call to action” for the broader market “to really take a hard look at how they're composing their companies.”
More conversations now include underrepresented communities like females and people of color founders, but despite it being one of the “hottest VC markets that we have seen in some time,” Lamb’s concerned that the “discourse and dialogue” isn’t translating into funding.
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“What I'm more concerned about is actually seeing dollars backing those founders. Despite the fact that global venture funding was up 4% year-on-year to $300 billion, female founders were funded less,” Lamb said. “There is really no excuse these days.”
Stephanie is a reporter for Yahoo Money and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @SJAsymkos.
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