As the second Female Founders Monitor shows, women remain severely underrepresented in the German startup ecosystem. Despite a minimal increase compared to the previous year (14.6 percent in 2018), the proportion of female founders remains at only 15.1 percent.
Although the proportion of female founders in Germany has increased slightly, it is still comparatively low. As the 2019 Female Founders Monitor found, the key differences between female and male founders include the way they balance family and career, startup financing, and entrepreneurial goals.
In cooperation with Google for Startups, the German Startups Association (Bundesverband Deutsche Startups e. V.) is publishing its second Female Founders Monitor in 2019. The monitor is intended as a central study on the importance of women in startup creation in Germany and is based on a survey of 1,547 startups. The study focuses on the importance of female founders, their motives, and challenges in order to provide important impetus for business, politics, and society.
The most important results in brief:
- Women are severely underrepresented in the German startup ecosystem: The proportion of female startup founders in Germany is currently 15.1 percent
- Additional requirements in private life: The compatibility of family and career plays a major role for female founders and is expressed, among other things, in flexible work organization - for example, female founders spend only about half of their working time in the office.
- Challenges in growth and financing: Only 7.3 percent of female-led startups employ more than ten people. They are also significantly less likely to receive venture capital (7.8 percent of female teams, 16.8 percent of male teams) and therefore more often have to rely on other sources of funding, such as family and friends.
- Women start socially: Almost half of the female founders (49.6 percent) orient their business model toward social issues. Among the male founders, only 36.4 percent pursue social goals. Instead, economic motives dominate: 74.9 percent of founders primarily pursue the goal of economic success—among female founders, this figure is just 58.4 percent.
