30 Surprising Facts About Female Founders

The US leads the world in high performance entrepreneurship. Female founders, in particular, contribute some of the greatest stats in growth in revenue, growth in employment, and financial efficiency.

By Lisa Calhoun

In several global studies, the United States leads the world in high-performance entrepreneurship. Female founders in particular contribute some of the most eye-popping stats around growth in revenue, growth in employment, financial efficiency, and entrepreneurial spirit. See how many of these facts you know already and how many surprise you:

Facts about female founders and starting companies

  1. Women start companies at 1.5 times the average rate in the United States.
  2. The absolute number of startups in Crunchbase with at least one female founder has more than quadrupled in the last five years, from 117 in 2009 to 555 in 2014.
  3. Women entrepreneurs in the United States rank their happiness at nearly three times that of women who are not entrepreneurs or established business owners.
  4. The US ranks No. 1 among 31 countries considered by Dell on the support of women’s entrepreneurship.
  5. Today, 18 percent of all startups have at least one female founder.
  6. There are just over 9 million women-owned companies in the United States.

Facts about hotbeds of women and entrepreneurship

  1. Brooklyn, New York, banks more female startups than any other single city in the US.
  2. Las Vegas has the honor of the highest percentage of venture-backed companies with at least one female founder: 26 percent.
  3. The cities with the shrimpiest numbers of female founders, by percentage, are Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto and San Jose, California.
  4. Texas claims the worst record of supporting women seeking venture capital. In 2014, 42 Texas startups got Series A rounds. Zero of these had female founders.
  5. In the United States, the frontiers of fast growth in the raw number of companies founded by women are, in order: North Dakota, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.
  6. The cities in the US where the combined economic clout of female founders is growing fastest are San Antonio, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Riverside, California.
  7. Dell puts Australia in the top spot as a nursery for potential women entrepreneur leaders. Over half of Australian women who start businesses are college-educated, which provides them with networks and experiences that they can leverage for growth.

Facts about women entrepreneurs and job creation

  1. A net new 340,000 jobs were added by woman-owned businesses between 2007 and 2015. At the same time, men-owned businesses shed 1.2 million jobs, according to a 2015 study by Womenable and American Express.

Facts about female founders and raising capital

  1. No matter which crowdfunding platform they choose, female founders perform equally well or better than their male counterparts when raising money online.
  2. Offline, it’s a different story. Only 10 percent of startups which raised Series A in 2014 had female founders. Today’s venture capital environment clocks some 305 active funds over $100 million. These funds collectively put $114 billion to work. 90% of it never sees a female founder.
  3. That said, venture capital firms with women partners are more than twice as likely to invest in companies with a woman on the executive team.
  4. Venture firms with a woman partner are more than three times as likely to invest in companies with women CEOs.
  5. 94% of decision makers at venture capital funds are male.
  6. Even so, there is more venture for women, and the women’s entrepreneurial ecosystemis gaining traction, as angel investor Kelly Hoey points out in Inc. 

Facts on performance and women entrepreneurs

  1. Among the most successful companies, men start their businesses with six times as much capital as women do, according to the most recent National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) Annual Report.
  2. One analysis by Quantopian hedge-fund researcher Karen Rubin showed that women CEOs outperform peers three to one in the S&P 500, further developing the conversation over women driving top financial returns.
  3. Businesses with a woman on the executive team are more likely to have significantly higher valuations at Series A—as in 64% higher.
  4. Businesses with a woman on the executive team are more likely to have significantly higher valuations in their last funding round—49% higher.
  5. 46% of the privately held companies in the US are now at least half-owned by women.
  6. Financially, women entrepreneurs outperform everyone but blue chips over time. In the last couple decades, the growth in the number of women’s businesses (up 68%), employment (up 11%), and revenues (up 72%) blows past the growth rates of all but the largest publicly-traded businesses, and tops growth rates among all other privately-held businesses over this period.
  7. Female-founded or co-founded “unicorn” companies—those with a billion or more in valuation—include Theranos, Eventbrite, SunRun, and Houzz.
  8. The list of richest women entrepreneurs in the US includes Diane Hendricks, owner and chairman of ABC Supply, a wholesale distributor of roofing, window, and siding materials in Beloit, Wisconsin; Forever 21’s Jin Sook Chang, worth $3.05 billion; Eren Ozmen, chair of Sierra Nevada, the biggest female-owned federal contractor in the US; Pleasant Rowland, creator of American Girl dolls; and Martine Rothblatt, who founded and runs biotech company United Therapeutics.

What women entrepreneurs say they need

  1. Almost half-of female founders (48%) cite a lack of available mentors or advisers as holding them back.
  2. Only a third say lack of capital is a constraint.

This article originally appeared at Inc.com

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