Venture investment in startups founded by women has historically trailed the overall market. Coupled with cutbacks in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives across various sectors, the landscape for female founders might seem bleak. However, data from 2024 tells a more nuanced story, according to the Female Innovation Index 2025 report by European venture platform Female Foundry.
Key Findings
The report showed European venture investment in startups founded by women declined by 12% in 2024 compared to the previous year. This decrease was nearly proportional to the 11% decline in overall venture investment. A particularly encouraging trend is that deep tech startups founded by women are securing more funding than those founded by men in that area.
The Female Innovation Index 2025 highlighted a growing number of female founders in deep tech. This growth can be attributed to strong links between the sector and academia, where women are often better represented. Roughly 33% of all venture capital raised by female entrepreneurs in Europe is allocated to deep tech startups—a 2% increase from gender-agnostic startups. Key areas of innovation include synthetic biology, generative AI, and drug development.
Female Foundry conducted a survey of over 1,200 female founders, investors, and executives, alongside more than 35 private equity firms, venture associations, and ecosystem players across 20 European countries for the report. It is important to note that Female Foundry considered startups with at least one female co-founder, which significantly broadened the study’s sample size compared to reports focusing solely on all-women founding teams.
Broader Context and Insights
Several surveys from the previous year pointed out that female founders remain vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts. These surveys showed that all-women founding teams managed to secure only 2.2% of the venture capital allocated in 2024.
Agata Nowicka, founder of Female Foundry and the report’s author, commented on the methodology. “I started the index because I realized that the oft-quoted 2% figure about the number of female-founded startups is not detailed enough,” she told TechCrunch. “I would not have been included in that stat because I had a male co-founder. We should be taking into account far more diverse metrics. That deep tech metric is heartening, but…women in academic environments need to be encouraged more to take up entrepreneurship.”
Nowicka added that there is still a stigma associated with transitioning to a startup from academia. She also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic created a more equitable environment for women in tech due to broader industry changes.
“As a founder in 2016, most VCs didn’t even have a website or had just a landing page. Many events were held privately,” she recalled. “The venture capital industry transformed during COVID because of the boom in investment during 2021-2022. VC became overall more accessible to women […] because they needed deal-flow, and it became more competitive.”
Report Highlights
The Female Foundry’s report also revealed the following:
- Female-founded businesses in Europe raised €5.76 billion in 2024, reflecting a 12% decrease from the €6.56 billion raised in 2023.
- The health, fintech, and food sectors attract the most significant venture investment in startups with female founders.
- The seed stage is where female founders experience the most success, with round sizes increasing by 7% across all stages compared to 2023.
- Over 80% of the 50 largest funding rounds secured by female-founded startups in 2024 went to companies with scientific backgrounds, including synthetic biology (€282.4 million), generative AI (€221.8 million), and drug development (€169.9 million).
- The U.K., France, and Germany lead in overall investment in female-founded companies. Finland and Denmark have the highest percentage of venture capital allocated to such startups.
