Women unbound: Unleashing female entrepreneurial potential
PwC, in collaboration with The Crowdfunding Center, is pleased to release this Women unbound report based on two years of seed crowdfunding data from nine of the biggest crowdfunding platforms globally. Learn more about how seed crowdfunding is unleashing female entrepreneurial potential below and join the conversation at #WomenUnbound
Women are better at crowdfunding than men
Crowdfunding, a FinTech innovation, is a construct that has revolutionised finance raising, enabling budding and established entrepreneurs to get new business ventures to market across the globe. It has also identified a powerful gender dynamic: seed crowdfunding campaigns led by women consistently outperform those led by men.
This report finds that while men clearly use seed crowdfunding more than women, women are more successful at crowdfunding then men. Seventeen percent of male-led campaigns reach their finance target, compared with 22% of female-led campaigns. Overall campaigns led by women were 32% more successful at reaching their funding target than those led by men across a wide range of sectors, geography and cultures.
Female crowdfunding success is in stark contrast to established funding mechanisms for business startups and growth in which women-led businesses continue to face barriers to accessing finance.
In light of these findings we call on governments, funders, business advisors and businesses of all sizes to seize this opportunity to identify, quantify and remove the grey-suit-factor, which remains at the root of this historic inequality in female founders’ access to finance.