Venture investments in women-run startups are constantly slowing down the entire market, and with companies in the sector reducing their diversity, equity and inclusive efforts, things seem tougher than ever for female founders.
However, this data tells another story from 2024. At least this one report by the Women Foundry of European venture platforms shows venture investments in startups founded by European women fell 12% from the previous year in 2024, but roughly along the line with an 11% decline in overall venture investments.
In particular, women who have founded deep tech startups raise more men than they do in the area. The report, called the Women's Innovation Index 2025, found an increasing number of female founders. We found this to increase thanks to relationships with academia, where women tend to be expressed more equally. Approximately 33% of all venture capital raised by female entrepreneurs in Europe are 2% more than gender-independent startups. Key areas of innovation include synthetic biology, generative AI, and drug development.
For the report, the Women Foundry looked into over 35 female founders, female investors, executives, and more than 35 private equity companies, venture associations and ecosystem players in 20 countries. It is noteworthy here that female founders counted startups with at least one female co-founder. This significantly increases the startup sample size considered in this report.
Last year, some studies generally agreed that female founders have continued to be deprived of so much scope by men, with the all-women founding team raising just 2.2% of the venture capital allocated in 2024.
“I started the index because I realized that the 2% figure on the number of startups that women founded wasn't detailed enough,” Agata Nowicka, founder of Women Foundry and author of the report, told TechCrunch. “As an entrepreneur, I had male co-founders, so I wouldn't have been included in that statistic, and we need to take into account much more diverse metrics.
While its deep technology indicators are encouraging, Novika believes that women in academic settings need to be encouraged more to address entrepreneurship. “There's still a bit of a stigma to joining a startup from academia,” she said.
She said the Covid-19 pandemic has helped create a more level playing field for tech women as the broader industries were forced to open up.
“As a founder in 2016, most VCS didn't even have a website or just a landing page. Many events were held personally,” she said. “The venture capital industry has changed during Covid due to the investment boom between 2021 and 2022. VCs have become more accessible to women overall […] They needed deal flow, which made them more competitive. ”
There are some interesting nuggets in the report:
Companies founded by women in Europe raised 5.76 billion euros in 2024, down 12% from those companies raised in 2023. The health, fintech and food sectors believe they are the most invested in startups with female founders. Seed Stage is where female founders are most successful, and on average, round sizes grown by women-founded startups increased by 7% in stages compared to 2023. million). The UK, France and Germany are top of the charts for investment in companies founded by women, while Finland and Denmark have the highest percentage of venture capital allocated to such startups.
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