Celebrating Female Founders
This week we are celebrating our female founders at Sting. Gender equality has long been a focus for us. In 2017 we started to measure and set goals for what kind of companies we wanted to help build and the proportion of companies with female founders in our programs.
The starting point
This week we are celebrating our female founders at Sting. Gender equality has long been a focus for us. In 2017 we started to measure and set goals for what kind of companies we wanted to help build and the proportion of companies with female founders in our programs.
Back then, 26% of the companies had at least one female founder. Today 2022 that figure stands at 75% which we are very proud of and shows that diversity and equality are going in the right direction.
Today, the proportion of female founders is one of our most important KPIs and something that permeates the entire business.
Putting numbers into perspective
We went back and looked at our data from 2021 to see what the numbers could tell us. 61 Sting startups raised approximately 1 bn SEK last year of which 54% had at least one female founder.
45% of the raised capital went to companies with at least one female founder.
8% of the capital went to all female-founded companies and 37% of the capital was invested in companies with mixed founding teams with at least one female founder.
How can we put these numbers into perspective? In comparison, according to a survey by Unconventional Venture, in 2020, all-women-founded startups raised just 0.7% of investment in the Nordics and 7.3% went to mixed-gender founding teams. That’s a massive gap and we believe women-founded startups deserve to have much higher numbers in the Nordics.
How did female-founded Sting companies do in founding rounds?
Major funding rounds in female-founded Sting companies include the 117 MSEK round in Volumental, 50MSEK in Evolar, and 48% MSEK raised in Surfcleaner.
Propel Capital, the investment arm of Sting, made 59% of its investments into startups with at least one female founder.
We are very proud of last year’s figures but remain dedicated to working for more female founders in Sting companies, helping to support our startups to build strong teams that take a long-term approach to funding, and view dialogues with investors as an ongoing process.
To celebrate women and encourage more of them to become entrepreneurs, we are opening up our open coaching to make our expertise more accessible. From the 7th-11th of March, female founders or idea owners can book a free coaching session with one of our experienced coaches to get personal advice on how to move their ideas further on their journey.
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