Deep Tech is a challenging field for female entrepreneurs. “Women founders have it tough. Women in ‘hard tech’ have it tougher” the US magazine Fast Company recently titled an article about the efforts of female Deep Tech founders to find investors for their technologies. Author Daniela Perdomo, cofounder and CEO of tech startup goTenna quotes a Crunchbase survey that reports that female-led ventures receive 44% less funding than their fair share. For deep tech the numbers were even more staggering with 54% less VC funding raised for non-female business categories, and up to alarming 75% for infrastructure and wireless companies, even though just these technologies actually require more investment.
Other reports do not draw a better picture for female founders and CEOs: According to the recently published report The State of European Tech 2019 by Atomico, 92% of all funds raised by European VC-backed companies went to all-male founding teams. Looking at the gender composition in executive-level positions of tech scaleups, the situation doesn’t look very promising either with data showing that for every woman executive, there are 12 men executives.
Still, for many investors the image a successful technology leader is associated with men. Hence more efforts are needed to transform the stereotypical image of a tech leader and give more visibility to female entrepreneurs and their companies.
That’s why we have created a Landscape giving visibility to female-led deep tech ventures. The landscape comprises over 60 European companies with a female CEO arranged by the five deep tech categories, strategically chosen with respect to major digital trends and European leadership potential: Digital Tech, Digital Industry, Digital Cities, Digital Finance and Digital Wellbeing.
