Crowdfunding, a FinTech innovation, is a construct that has revolutionised finance raising, enabling budding and established entrepreneurs to get new business ventures to market across the globe. It has also identified a powerful gender dynamic: seed crowdfunding campaigns led by women consistently outperform those led by men.
This report finds that while men clearly use seed crowdfunding more than women, women are more successful at crowdfunding then men. Seventeen percent of male-led campaigns reach their finance target, compared with 22% of female-led campaigns. Overall campaigns led by women were 32% more successful at reaching their funding target than those led by men across a wide range of sectors, geography and cultures.
Female crowdfunding success is in stark contrast to established funding mechanisms for business startups and growth in which women-led businesses continue to face barriers to accessing finance.
In light of these findings we call on governments, funders, business advisors and businesses of all sizes to seize this opportunity to identify, quantify and remove the grey-suit-factor, which remains at the root of this historic inequality in female founders’ access to finance.
Crowdfunding is fundamentally about communication and about stories. It’s about nurturing relationships and persuading a crowd of people to come on a journey with you. That journey doesn’t end when your project is successfully crowdfunded: successful entrepreneurs maintain those relationships, and use their crowd to unlock growth, relationships, research, development and value in their businesses.
What the data in this report shows clearly is that opportunities for women entrepreneurs have not been equal, but thanks to crowdfunding, entrepreneurs can now access the market directly – and this makes a huge difference.
Endemic bias is a problem women entrepreneurs should no longer face. Eradicating these barriers provides opportunities that will benefit women and men, business, and society.We call on governments, funders, business advisors and businesses of all sizes to seize this opportunity to identify, quantify and remove the grey-suit-factor.