Work-Bench report: less than 2% of US enterprise software startups, or 354 out of 18,500, have at least one female founder, likely due to issues getting funding
Less than 2% of enterprise software startups in the U.S. feature a female founder, a new report finds Tweets: @annelibby and @aprilkoh_ Tweets: Anne Libby / @annelibby : “In general diversity is good for innovation,” Ms. Spang said. Because of that, she said, when things are better for women, they are really better for everyone. The numbers don't lie. Good job, @jerseejess & colleagues at Work-Bench. https://www.wsj.com/... April Koh / @aprilkoh_ : “Less than 2% of enterprise software startups in the U.S. have at least one female founder according to a new report.” - great report by @Work_Bench @jerseejess and @fendien - and happy to represent as a female ceo of an enterprise tech startup! https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Work-Bench's census of 354 female-founded companies out of 18,500 US enterprise software startups is the latest entry in a decade-long string of measurements that keep landing near the same number. PitchBook found all-female founding teams took about 2.2% of the $85B VCs deployed in 2017, and Female Founders Fund counted women leading just 16 of 204 Bay Area Series A rounds in 2015.
What the new report adds is category specificity: enterprise software, the segment where Work-Bench itself invests, sits below even those benchmarks, and the firm attributes the gap to difficulties raising venture money rather than founder supply.
First-order effects
- The 354 identified companies become a de facto sourcing list for funds like Work-Bench that want deal flow their peers are structurally missing, while generalist VCs face fresh evidence their pipelines filter out female founders before pitch stage.
Second-order effects
- Funds competing for enterprise software deals must now explain why their portfolios diverge from the 2% baseline, giving female-founder-focused vehicles a measurable differentiation argument with their own limited partners.
Third-order effects
- If the funding bottleneck is the cause, the compounding math of prior studies — women at 13% of founders but holding only 7% of founder equity per the Axios analysis — points to enterprise software's next generation of category leaders being capitalized from an unusually narrow slice of founding teams.
The trend: A decade of PitchBook, Female Founders Fund, and Crunchbase measurements shows female-founded startup share creeping upward from a very low base, with each new report turning the gap itself into a benchmark investors are measured against.