femalefounded

Venture

Steady Support: Female Entrepreneurs Receive Unwavering Funding in 2023

Female-founded companies in the U.S. raised $44.4 billion out of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year. Such teams raised 26.1% of all venture capital allocated this year, a sizable jump from the 18.2% they picked up last year. This follows the pattern that women founders still fare better with a male co-founder in the mix. Kyle Stanford, lead VC analyst at PitchBook, told TechCrunch+ that it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason why funding to women founders has dipped a bit, but he added that the decline in deal counts for women founders follows the trends of the broader market. “That is not meant to make activity in female-founded companies look better, but the context of market difficulties is important.”Overall, less than 25% of all deals went to female-founded companies in 2023.

Ava Patel
January 11, 2024

Startups

“Diem: Empowering Women and Non-Binary Individuals through Social Search”

A startup called Diem wants to tackle the problem of “search engine gender bias,” where results can produce default male information, making many women feel unsatisfied by the answers they receive to taboo or personal questions online. Diem also recently partnered with verified content providers so users can get information from trusted sources. The first four companies are experts in the reproductive health space, including hormone health startup Aavia, sexual telehealth clinic Hey Jane, vaginal health startup Evvy, and female health brand Stix. In the future, users will be able to nominate community members who already have a Diem account. Six spaces are available, run by community members and inspired by popular posts on the platform.