Female founders are finally making progress—the potential snowball effect

Female founders are finally making progress—the potential snowball effect

VIEW IN BROWSER | SUBSCRIBE     CLOSING THE GAP Thursday, December 2, 2021 Julia Boorstin is CNBC's senior media & tech reporter. You can follow her on Twitter @JBoorstin. As we enter the last month of the year there are some signs that female entrepreneurs in the tech space are making meaningful progress. Though women are still far underrepresented in the tech start-up field, there's good reason to believe that small but meaningful steps of progress could have a snowball effect, and help drive more growth for women in the tech ecosystem.    After 2020 marked a dramatic decline in funding for female VCs, 2021 has shown a major turnaround. In the first three quarters of 2021 female-founded companies raised $40.4 billion, that's up from $23.7 billion for ALL of 2019. Plus, for late-stage start-ups, median valuations increased about 70% from $70 million to $120 million. (This is all according to PitchBook's Female Founders in the US VC Ecosystem report.)   There's also evidence that the outperformance of female-founded companies will drive further investment. The PitchBook report finds that female-founded companies are outperforming the market, and female-founded firms are selling or going public faster, yielding quicker returns to investors. Those stronger returns could prompt other investors to follow — and invest more in female-led companies.  Nothing shows the potential for female founders more than the fact that this year has turned three of them into billionaires. Fortune's December/January cover story features Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd and 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. In November, Blakely closed a deal to sell her company to Blackstone for $1.2 billion. When Bumble went public in February, Wolfe Herd's stake in her dating app that puts women in control, was worth $1.5 billion. (With the dip in Bumble share prices, Forbes recently said Wolfe Herd is not currently a billionaire, but she's close.) And in June, 23andMe went public via a SPAC at a $3.5 billion valuation.     What's key here is that these three women have innovated in vastly different fields—consumer products, genomics and online dating. Not only do they offer role models for a next generation of founders, I would argue that they also create valuable new patterns for the male VCs who control the vast majority of investment dollars, by offering a counterpoint to the stereotype of young founders as typically male and white. Fortune makes the very strong argument that all the women who work at these companies have the potential to seed the next generation of female-founded start-ups as well.   Now there's potential that success breeds success, and the funding trend continues into 2022.   What progress would you like to see for women founders in 2022? Share your thoughts with us at askmakeit@cnbc.com.  More articles from Closing the Gap Disney names Susan Arnold as board chair, replacing Bob Iger For the first time, a woman has been named board chair at Disney. Susan Arnold, who has been on the company's board for 14 years and has served as independent lead director since 2018, will succeed Bob Iger, who stepped down as Disney CEO early last year. Iger has served as chairman of the board since 2012 and is set to leave the position effective Dec. 31, CNBC's Jessica Bursztynsky reports. Read More This 34-year-old increased her salary by $194,000—after quitting jobs 6 times. 'Here are the exact scripts I used' Long before the Great Resignation saw millions of Americans leave their jobs, CNBC Make It contributor Mandi Woodruff-Santos used quitting as a key part of her career growth and wealth-building strategy.  Since 2010, she's quit jobs six times — increasing her salary by nearly $194,000, and by an average of 39% for each new opportunity. Here's how she did it. Read More 38% of women in tech plan on leaving their job within the next 2 years — here's why A recent survey of 1,000 women working in tech found that 38% of respondents are thinking about leaving their jobs in the next two years. The women surveyed cited issues of pay transparency and gender equity in hiring and culture, among others. Many of the survey participants believe that simply having more women on their team would help increase workplace morale. Read More Unsubscribe Manage Newsletters Digital Products   Feedback Terms of Service Privacy Policy   © 2021 CNBC LLC. All rights reserved. A property of NBC Universal. 900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes and Market Data and Analysis. Data also provided by THOMSON REUTERS