Gender diversity across our portfolio

Two years after our first analysis, we’re back with more granular stats on gender diversity across our portfolio based on data from >250 companies and >20,000 full-time employees.

1. Founding teams — while we’ve backed more female-only teams, the share of male-only teams hasn’t reduced significantly.

2. CEOs — as they are typically one of the founding team, at least until late stage, this stat is closely linked to the previous one, and has therefore remained consistent as well.

3. FTEs — while in aggregate the % of female FTEs is similar across different categories of company size, their median varies meaningfully, from 1/3 in companies <50 towards almost 1/2 in companies >500.

4. Champions — some of our portfolio companies have been deliberate about gender diversity as a priority for building a strong team and culture, and have benefited from a virtuous cycle of attracting top female talent.

5. Tech & product FTEs — gender diversity in that department remains a challenge for scaling companies, where having significantly more than 1/4 of female FTEs is the exception.

Clearly, there’s still a long way to go across all of these dimensions. We’re committed to publish these stats biannually to hold ourselves accountable and support founders with robust benchmarks.