Nordic Innovation is again supporting Unconventional Ventures with their yearly Startup Funding Report. The 2020 mapping showed some revealing numbers regarding how big the divide was between investments in male and female-founded startups. This time, the Unconventional Ventures team has also measured how good the Nordics are doing compared to Germany, United Kingdom and France.
A record-breaking year in Europe
2020 was a record year for capital deployed: decision makers invested over €34.5 billion in Europe according to Dealroom. This is very positive news in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and seeing that many businesses have struggled in the last year and a half. The numbers on diversity on the other hand are not as positive.
% of investments for all male teams 92% Mixed teams: 7,3%*
Investments in women-founded teams only represent 0,7% of all investments in 2020. If we compare the numbers for the Nordics to the previous year, there is a slight improvement for mixed-gender founder teams (6.6% in 2019), but not for all-women founder teams (1% in 2019).
Looking outside the Nordic region, at Germany, France and the United Kingdom, United Kingdom and France both perform better when it comes to supporting all-women founding teams in 2021.*
*The Startup Funding Report, 10 November 2021
Creating impact companies in the Nordics
An impact company is a company which has been assigned a least one core sustainable development goal (SDG). With this aspect in mind, it is very interesting to see that founder teams with at least one female founder are 73% more likely to be considered an impact company. In other words, if investors want to back companies with SDGs at their core, they should look for all-women or mixed-gender teams.
"We find it very interesting that women and mixed teams are far more likely to create impact companies that will make the world better. We hope that investors will start seeing that these companies are the future, and that they miss out on opportunities for value creation."
Marthe Haugland, Senior Innovation Adviser at Nordic Innovation.
Climate change continues to be a top priority amongst the European population and shows investors that focusing on impact companies can benefit both the company and the investor in more ways.
Nordic Innovation work to promote sustainability and equality in all our programs and projects. We have identified diversity and gender aspects as crucial in the future value creation in the Nordics. We have therefore established a Nordic Task Force for Diversity to discuss the issue between the national organizations in the Nordics. To have a factual foundation for discussion, we support the Startup Funding Report to get the numbers on the table.
Read more about the Nordic Task Force for Diversity here
The Startup Funding Report
This is the second year that Nordic Innovation is supporting Unconventional Ventures and their Startup Funding Report.
In 2021, we have together with UBS, Startup Sweden, Tillväxtverket and European Investment Bank supported the making of the report once again.
