"Investors have an opportunity to infuse greater rationality into their decision-making process by consistently framing their questions to candidates regardless of gender." - Dr. Dana KanzeDr. Kanze hits the nail on the head with this answer. Parity in access to capital has been the focus of my research for the last year at UB with the e-Law Center and the most pervasive commonality in barriers to access is cognitive bias. As Kanze notes in this PitcbBook/All Raise report, one of the biggest differences is in how investors are actually asking questions to companies. Men tend to receive more promotive questions while women tend to receive questions which require them to defend their idea. By framing the question this way, founders are often boxed into an answer that inherently follows the question.
The result is drastically lower levels of investment in female founders.
All this while the data consistently shows female entrepreneurs generally outperform their male counterparts over a shorter period of time. Investors (including LPs) have a responsibility to create awareness of their cognitive bias and take actions to correct it and present a more rational, equitable process.
This premier PitchBook-All Raise All In: Women in the VC Ecosystem highlights global and US-focused trends surrounding female-founded companies and female-led VC funds throughout the last decade. Progress in garnering investment for female-founded startups has been made in recent years, with 2018 notching $46.3 billion in total capital across nearly 3,500 deals. In addition, female-founded startups are taking substantially less time to exit than the overall market, an important metric for female entrepreneurs and the investors who back them. This report also illustrates areas in which gender bias still continually proliferates, and offers key advice points and a call to action from our partners and sponsors.