A headline says female founders raised a record $73.6B in 2025.
But remove two companies and the “record” disappears.
Meanwhile, all-female founding teams raised just 1.1% of venture capital.
International Women’s Day is a good moment to ask:
how much progress have we actually made?
The two-company problem is a really important piece of statistical honesty that deserves far more airtime than it's getting - stripping out Anthropic and Scale AI essentially exposes the headline as a rounding error dressed up as progress.
I think a lot of it is about setting narratives. They use these type of headlines to capture attention of the people who want to believe that things have changed without looking at the data. But in reality data speaks the truth which many people don't want to read.
The two-company problem is a really important piece of statistical honesty that deserves far more airtime than it's getting - stripping out Anthropic and Scale AI essentially exposes the headline as a rounding error dressed up as progress.
I think a lot of it is about setting narratives. They use these type of headlines to capture attention of the people who want to believe that things have changed without looking at the data. But in reality data speaks the truth which many people don't want to read.
"This is just fucking depressing", said the female CEO/Co-founder of the HealthTech startup, Kithli.com
That’s such a smart idea!
Thank you so much! I needed that! Starting to raise a seed round in about a week. If you're interested in learning more, let me know.
Definitely! Shoot me a dm. Very needed.