Female Founders Raised a record €230 million in 2021

Last year Irish Female Founders raised more than €230 million, more than twice the record €105 million raised the previous year according to a new report released by TechIreland.

The report shows that in 2021, fifty five tech startups and scale-up companies with a female founder or co-founder raised €230 million through Venture Capital, Grants, and Angel Investments.

Female Founders Raised a record €230 million in 2021

This year’s report also highlights the gender balance within the investor community. Only 20% of the partners in Irish VCs are female and 30% of the mid-level team.

TechIreland tracks more than 470 female-founded companies, 16% of the overall startups and scaleups on the island. Of the 311 companies that raised funding in 2021, 18% are female-founded.

For the first time, eight female-founded companies raised over €10 million each, or 70% of the total. In 2020 only two companies raised over €10 million.

Despite the huge jump in funding, companies with female founders still raise less than the general population of tech companies.

While female founders on average doubled their investment to €4.1 million last year, that was still significantly less than the average of €5.3 million for all companies.

Despite significant support from Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Startup Funding and the Competitive Startup Fund, the report shows a drop in the number of early-stage rounds between €100,000 and €1 million.

Responding to the report, Chief Executive of TechIreland, John O’Dea said: “diversity is really important as all the research shows that diverse teams perform better.

“From an investor’s perspective, and for Ireland, better performance means more wealth and employment.

“These are great results, but they are not grounds for complacency – females-led tech businesses still only get 13% of the investment into Irish tech. We can and must do better than this .”

Sarah Jane Larkin of the Irish Venture Capital Association said, “We can be confident that the investment climate for female-founded companies in Ireland is improving.

“However, none of us can be happy with a world where women secure only 13% of all funding, and we must now focus on efforts to accelerate the funding of female-founded startups.’’

Sheelagh Daly of Enterprise Ireland commented: ‘‘Back in 2011 only 7% of EI backed HPSUs included a woman founder.

“By putting a spotlight on this and providing capability and funding supports specifically targeting women, this has now tripled to over 21%.’’

More information can be found here.