Female entrepreneurs outperform male peers in crowdfunding campaigns
FEMALE entrepreneurs financing their ventures through crowdfunding are outperforming their male counterparts at a global level, new research has claimed.
Women-led campaigns were 32 per cent more successful than men-led campaigns, a study by accountancy firm PwC and trade body The Crowdfunding Center showed.
Women reached their targets in 22 per cent of cases, against the 17 per cent success rate among male seed crowdfunders.
The study also showed that female-led projects obtained larger pledge amounts, with individual lenders contributing on average $87 (£67) to women and $83 to men.
The research, which surveyed over 450,000 campaigns over 2015 and 2016, found that women reached their targets more often than men even in male-led sectors such as technology.
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In the digital technology segment, where the ratio between male and female crowdfunders stands at three to one, 16 per cent of women were successful in clinching their funding target, compared with 10 per cent of men. In the broader tech space, where there are nine male entrepreneurs for every female crowdfunder, the balance stands at 13 per cent against 10 per cent success rates.
The entertainment and media sector, which has the best success rates for crowdfunding campaigns, saw women outperforming men by seven per cent, equating to a 30 per cent rate compared to a 23 per cent rate.
Meanwhile, in markets with larger volumes of seed crowdfunding such as the US and the UK, men’s success rates averaged 20 per cent. This compares with 24 per cent and 26 per cent of women reaching their goals in the US and the UK respectively.
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“It’s a sharp contrast to established funding mechanisms for business startups and growth in which women-led businesses continue to face endemic barriers to accessing finance,” PwC and The Crowdfunding Center commented in the report, as they called on policymakers and industry players to promote equality.
“Seed crowdfunding is now a well-established environment through which women can thrive, unrestricted by any embedded bias; this can be used more widely across the globe.
“We call on governments, funders, business advisors and businesses of all sizes to seize this opportunity to identify, quantify and remove the barriers which remain at the root of this historic inequality in female founders’ access to finance.”
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