Female-founded climate tech companies secured just 6.6 percent of venture capital in 2023
That startling statistic comes as a Boston Consulting Group study found that female-founded companies had a much better ROI.
In a recent article for GreenBiz, Leah Garden writes about a startling statistic: In 2023, 21 out of 319 climate tech funding rounds in the U.S. went to female-founded companies, according to data from Pitchbook. That’s just 6.6 percent of deals.
The term “female founder” refers to a female-presenting person acting as the sole founder of the company.
Crunchbase’s data about gender-related funding trends skews slightly better than the Pitchbook figures. Its tracking showed that 65 U.S.-based, female-founded climate tech companies received venture capital funding in 2023, or about 10 percent of all funding rounds. The same database shows 565 male-founded climate tech start-ups received funding in the same period.
Garden writes that “the disparity between Pitchbook’s and Crunchbase’s data likely results from the way each researcher defines climate tech. Either way, 2023’s number is a step backward.”
And this comes despite a statistic she cites from a Boston Consulting Group study of five years of data. It showed that female-founded companies generate more than twice as much revenue per dollar invested than male-founded companies. Every dollar of funding invested in female-founded companies generated 78 cents, compared to the 31 cents generated by male-founded companies, according to the study.
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