Female Founders Report 2021: Only a few women found companies - but if they do, they do so successfully

The proportion of women among start-up founders is still very low. There are many reasons for this, although female founders actually create more jobs than men. An insight into the Female Founders Report 2021 from Startbase.

Be it Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk - most popular founders are male. If you're looking for a flagship female founder, you'll have to dig deeper. Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of underwear manufacturer Spanx is certainly one of them, as is Arianna Huffington, media entrepreneur and founder of the proto-Internet newspaper Huffington Post.

What is hinted at at the top becomes even more apparent across the board: women are less likely than men to start a business. The Female Founders Report from Startbase now shows this for Germany with frightening clarity. Last year, only 11.9 percent of all startup founders in Germany were female. That is even less than in the economy as a whole, where the figure is 17.9 percent.

The figures for individual sectors are even more sobering. In the finance and insurance sector, 7.2 percent of founders are women, and 6 percent in the ICT sector. The most clearly male-dominated sector is the security sector, with women accounting for 1.7 percent. The only sector that is really noticeably above average is textiles, where 26.7 percent of founders are women.

Even when women set up a company, they are less likely to found one together with other women than with men. Only 16 percent of female founders rely on a female team, while 50.5 percent bring men on board (the remaining 33.5 percent are individual founders).

Yet it is by no means the case that women are less successful when they start up. The economic benefit may even be higher when women start up, or at least that's what some figures from the Female Founders Report suggest. All-female teams create an average of 23 jobs per female founder. This means that they outperform all-male teams, which create only 17 jobs per founder.

The reasons for the disproportion therefore lie elsewhere. One aspect that becomes clear from the data: Women, even when they start up, receive significantly less attention. This can be seen, for example, in mentions in start-up media: Even when the size of the startup is factored out - large startups are mentioned more often than small ones - male teams of founders and also mixed teams have more space in the media than all-female teams.

Of course, many other aspects play a role besides coverage. For example, prominent female founders such as Michelle Skodowski of Botfriends and Stefanie Langner of Leankoala complain about subconscious prejudices among investors.

It's a problem that policymakers have also recognized. "The opportunity to start a business should be one of the options for girls in particular for their own career paths," emphasizes Federal Digitization Commissioner Dorothee Bär in her welcoming address to the Female Founders Report: "We should make sure of that."

"Unfortunately, it is still serious that male investor teams tend to invest in male startups," meanwhile Bettina Stark-Watzinger complains. She is parliamentary director of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Her areas of interest also include the German startup scene and how it deals with diversity. "Here, public institutions in particular, such as KfW Capital, are also called upon to increase the female share among investors," she demands: "This can be done through mentoring programs or by poaching successful women from other professions in the financial industry."

Stark-Watzinger sees the ball in the court of politics: "By not giving female talent enough of a chance, we as an economy are missing out on great opportunities, especially now in the crisis." Ingrained role models need to be dismantled at school, for example in a school subject on economics. "Those who have basic knowledge of our economic system and entrepreneurship also gain the courage to start up their own businesses," Stark-Watzinger said.

Female Founders Week 2021

This article is part of our special on female entrepreneurship in Germany.

Want to learn more? Downloadthe entire Female Founders Report 2021 here:

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