Mapping Out The Top Female Founders On Every Continent

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It’s no secret that when it comes to funding and investment for entrepreneurs on a global scale, women (and especially women of color) are being ignored at a depressing rate compared to men. With 98% of Venture Capital funding going to men, to be more precise, the gender gap in the world of entrepreneurship has a long way to go because it means women-led companies aren’t hitting the market in the same way as male-led companies.

One of the major barriers to securing funding is gender bias. Research shows that female start-up founders face negative attitudes during pitches.

Investors ask women more about risk and losses, while men are asked about ambitions and achievements. But here’s why prejudiced investors are missing out:

Female founders deliver higher profits.
They are more likely to run a socially responsible business.
They are driven by ideas more than money = better for long-term success.

Thankfully the world is slowly changing, and with more awareness of the huge gender gap in funding, we see more female-led VC companies, and others, vowing to do better when it comes to taking pitches and investing in innovative ideas.

For the female-founded companies that have been well-funded and are now thriving, it is interesting to take a look and see how the investment has helped them. Women entrepreneurs span the globe and are launching brands and companies, many of which are now household names in business.

BusinessFinancing.co.uk analyzed data from the business information resource Crunchbase to identify the top female founder on every continent in the world and created this new set of maps to show who they are and what they do.

To create the maps shown below, BusinessFinancing.co.uk selected female founders that have been a founder or co- founder of at least one company in a given country or state of the US-listed in CrunchBase. For each country, the research team selected the women who founded companies with the greatest funding amount raised. For some countries, no qualifying companies with female founders were listed on CrunchBase. In cases where there was more than one female co-founder, all-female co-founders were included.

Industry categorization was created on the basis of industries and company descriptions, as listed on CrunchBase. The final dataset contains 107 female founders and co-founders across 102 countries in the world. For the US, 57 female founders were included from 50 states and DC.

Global Top 10

Above is a preview of the top 10 female founders in the world.

Breaking it down by continent, starting with Europe, here is more information on the top female founder in each region.

Europe

Victoria van Lennep made it to the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018 after raising over $250m in lending capital for her UK company, Lendable. The total raised now stands at over $1bn. Lendable uses machine-learning tech to automate credit decisions, offering customers fairer loan rates. Biotech start-ups are big in Europe, but our research shows there’s room for gaming, too. In Finland, Stella Wang raised nearly $7m to create Minecraft-inspired sandbox games for the social generation. She co-founded Dazzle Rocks and provided the creative vision and valuable insight into the cultural differences across eastern and western gaming markets.

North America

The top female founder in the US is Rebekah Neumann, who raised nearly $20bn for The We Company. This is the parent company of WeWork and other subsidiaries and has interests in real estate, finance, and hospitality. Neumann has since taken a step back from The We Company amidst some controversy. Our research reveals that North American female founders often find success with e-commerce and business software companies. One stand-out example is Kemly Camacho, who founded Sulá Batsú in 2005 as a socially-oriented co-operative. Camacho has raised $350,000 to support development in Haitian communities through digital technology, art and culture, and knowledge-sharing.

Aside from Rebekah Neumann (New York), Georgia’s Kathryn Petralia is America’s top female founder. She was also Forbes’ 98th most powerful woman in the world in 2017. Petralia has raised nearly $2.5bn for Kabbage, a fintech company that simplifies working capital loans for small businesses. Biotech and health start-ups are a lucrative business for female founders across the States. Our map shows that the top founders of 21 states are with biotech/health firms. In Texas, the trio of Ann Leen, Helen Heslop, and Cliona Rooney was at the heart of the AlloVir team that raised $159m to develop cell therapies for virus sufferers.

To see the full research behind these maps, as well as others for South America, The Middle East & Central Asia, Asia and Oceania, and Africa, head over to BusinessFinancing.co.uk.

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