Is the problem that VCs are ignoring startups with female founders, or is it that women are not becoming startup founders in general? For the first one, that's a problem that VCs need to fix. For the second, if there's something systemically keeping women out of tech startups, that's a problem the <i>world</i> needs to fix.<p>Assuming that VCs always pick the most promising startup founders without discrimination, the next question is would everyone rather VCs fund unprepared or unqualified founders in order to be more inclusive and look better from a PC standpoint, or pick the best founders that come in front of them and accept that there may not be a diverse mix of people at the company?<p>It's really easy to prove that they're not funding female founders. It's just as easy to shame them for it in the media. It's a lot harder to prove that this is done out of bias or malice. It's even harder to make the business decision to fund more female founders if you're fairly certain that the female founders that approach you for funding are not prepared to be startup founders.<p>So what can we do? Women leaders in tech aren't exactly uncommon, nor do they necessarily make the news more than male leaders. I'm sure there are <i>fewer</i> female tech leaders than there are men, but that brings us back to the question of is there actually a problem, and if so is it for the tech companies to solve, or is it for the world to solve?
That second chart is most telling: <a href="https://twitter.com/shanley/status/440591732283961344/photo/1" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/shanley/status/440591732283961344/photo/...</a><p>Sure it took them 10 years... but they did finally get to the point that they pretty much match the BLS number. So what is their problem exactly? They didn't get there <i>fast enough</i>? This just strikes me as one of those <i>never enough</i> issues. They got there... late... but there. But damn them anyway.<p>And as others have mentioned, we would need to compare this to a plot of <i>all applicants</i> for each year. More important than "percentage of funded companies that had 1+ female" would be "percentage of companies with 1+ female that got funded." Those are two totally different data points.
Two things prevent this from being a cogent narrative, in my opinion:<p>- How do these figures compare to the overall population of applicants?<p>- How do these figures compare to the entirety of VC-backed startups?<p>Without that knowledge, this is just extrapolation around a set of isolated data points.