Opinion
The Underside of Silicon Valley’s Co-Founder Mantra
The unchallenged dogma of tech investors is one structural reason why a shockingly small number of female entrepreneurs get funding.
It was both maddening and somehow unsurprising to see that only 2.1% of VC dollars so far this year have gone to all-female teams. The number had crawled up to 2.7% in 2019, but in the throes of pandemic uncertainty, investment capital for female founders slipped back to a three-year low.
The laments are loud—but the attempt to solve a problem without understanding it is doomed to fail. The entire technology and venture ecosystem is steeped in sexism. Of course efforts to equalize funding are sputtering when nothing is being done to address both the bias that makes it so difficult for women to even get started as founders and the double standard of irrelevant expectations to which we are held.