Women founders received only 3.9% of all student startup funding over past decade

Just 3.9% of venture capital (VC) funding for student startups in Australia has gone to women-only founders in the last decade, a new report shows.

NextGen Ventures, Australia’s first student-led VC fund, launched this week, releasing a report that details where VC funding has gone for student startups. The report highlights an overwhelmingly low portion of funding directed at women founders for student startups.

Student-founded startups have raised more than $1.2 billion since 2012 over 65 different startups, including multi-million dollar company Atlassian.

However, over the course of a decade, just 3.9% of that $1.2 billion has gone to student-led startups with a team of women founders. Mixed-gender startups received 1.8% of funding. The rest – 94.3% – went to all-male founders.

Indeed, this percentage demonstrates improvement from years gone by. Before 2018, 100% of VC funding for student-founded startups went to startups founded by a team of men.

The statistics from the last financial year (2022-23) show VC funding for women-founded student startups is at its lowest point since 2017. Only $600,000 from VC funding was given to startups founded by women only, compared to the $1.2 million given to male-founded startups. Around $900,000 in VC funds went to mixed-gender founding teams.

Funding for women-led startups peaked in 2019 (10%) and 2020 (25%) with the student-founded startup HealthMatch, founded by Manuri Gunawardena. However, by 2021, funding for women-only or mixed-gender startups reduced back to just 3%.

Concerningly, the report authors note the funding gap is not improving for women-founded student startups.

Just one of the 14 recently funded startups in the last financial year was founded by a women-only team – Xylo, a data and analytics platform supporting companies in measuring and managing their biodiversity footprint.

Three of the 14 startups had at least one woman in the founding team, while the other ten were founded by teams of men.

Overall, UNSW has produced the most student startups backed by VC funding – 24%. However, out of the 21 startups that have come from the Sydney university, just two have been founded by women.

The statistics produced in NextGen Ventures’ report are reflective of the larger startup sector in Australia when it comes to VC funding for women-founded startups.

In 2023, according to figures from the State of Australian Start-up Funding Report, startups founded by women secured just 4% of the $3.5 billion in startup funding in Australia, with all-male teams taking the vast majority of the 413 investment deals done.

This article was first published by Women’s Agenda.