AUTHORS: Antonio Davila, Deborah Dulex, Fara Majri, Amparo San José-European Investment Bank-November 2024

The new study, ‘Women Founders in European Deep Tech Start-ups’ reveals that women founders in the field receive less total funding compared with men founders. According to the study, women are underrepresented in deep tech start-ups, with less than one quarter (24%) of deep tech start-ups created in 2022 having at least one woman in the founding team. 7,165 start-ups founded since2010 were analysed as part of the study using the Dealroom database (a global provider of data and intelligence on start-ups and tech ecosystems) across 37 European countries.

Subject and context of the Study

•  The study addresses a crucial aspect of the Deep Tech startup landscape in Europe, which is the presence of women and its implications in the life of these companies.
• Startups are one of the most relevant mechanisms to transfer research carried out in European R&D labs such as universities and research centres to the market. Europe is home to some of the best scientists in the world, yet their presence does not translate into Europe having enough leading technology companies
•  Women are 50% of the population, having a representation of women in Deep Tech startups lower than this 50% indicates that Europe is not taking advantage of the talent available in its population.
• The study provides insights into the shortcomings that the European Deep Tech startup ecosystem faces regarding women in founding teams. Europe is defined as geographic Europe as used in the Dealroom database used for this study.
• The study analyses the European Deep Tech startup population with an emphasis on the implications of the presence of women in the startup founding team.
• The study defines Women Deep Tech Startups as startups with at least one woman in the founding team.
• The study relies on the database that Dealroom provided in September 2023 the time of the study and includes startups funded from 2010 to 2022. The classification of a company as a Deep Tech startup is based on Dealroom’s evaluation.-

The study addresses the following objectives

• Understand the participation of women in founding teams.
• Analyse the implications of women in founding team for the performance of the startup and the implications of women in founding teams for the funding path of the startup .
• Analyse the type of funding received by startups with women in founding teams, the type of investors, and the implications on the valuation of the startup

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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