Female founders in Austria are clearly in the minority

The gender investment gap remains large in Austria: only 18 of the 169 founders of Austrian start-ups who received venture capital financing in the first half of 2024 are women.

This corresponds to a share of around eleven percent (151 people male, 89 percent) and is at the same level as the same period last year, according to calculations by the consulting agency EY.

There was a slight increase in the diversity of the start-up founding team that was able to complete financing: almost a quarter (23 percent) of the teams are mixed – significantly more than in the first half of 2023 (15 percent).

All-female founding teams remain rare – only two (three percent) of the 70 Austrian start-ups that recorded at least one financing round in the first half of 2024 had an exclusively female founding team (myBios; Vienna Textile Lab).

After a long stagnation, a positive trend can be seen in the financing volume: a quarter of the total volume (24.2 percent) went to mixed founding teams in the first half of 2024 – more than in any other half of the year before. To date, around nine out of ten euros regularly went to all-male teams.

This growth is mainly due to a financing round: 63 million euros for Prewave with the mixed founding team with Lisa Smith and Harald Nitschinger.

In general, however, financing rounds and volumes in Austria are declining in the first half of 2024: A total of 70 financing rounds were registered, which is 26 percent less than in the first half of 2023, when 95 financing rounds marked a record high for a first half of the year (2022: 79).

Female founders underrepresented in top sectors

Another reason for the gender investment gap is the clearly different sector focus of founders. The proportion of female founders in four of the five top sectors in terms of financing amounts in the first half of the year was only below average – in some cases it was zero.

While the proportion of women in the strongest sector, Software & Analytics, is still at twelve percent – ​​slightly above the average of eleven percent – ​​it is ten percent in the health sector and just five percent in the energy sector.

In the FinTech/InsurTech and Hardware sectors, there is not a single female founder in the company who completed a financing round in the first half of 2024.

Female founders are most strongly represented in the food sector, where every second founding member is female. The proportion of women is also above average in the areas of mobility (22 percent), recruitment (20 percent) and media & entertainment (17 percent).

In eight of the 16 sectors examined, there is not a single woman in the founding teams of the start-ups financed so far this year (AdTech, ConstructionTec/Green Building, E-Commerce, Education, FinTech/InsurTech, Hardware, Professional Services and PropTech).