Of 7.8 billion euros in venture capital flowing into German startups in 2025, all-female-led teams received 53 million euros. Barely one percent. The disparity is hard to justify: female founders generate 78 cents of revenue per invested dollar, male founders only 31 cents.
More Revenue with Less Capital
The most widely cited study on this topic comes from the Boston Consulting Group, which analyzed 350 startups through the MassChallenge Accelerator Program. The result: female-founded startups generated 78 cents in revenue per invested dollar, male-founded teams just 31 cents. Over five years, women-led startups generated 730,000 dollars in cumulative revenue compared to 662,000 dollars for all-male teams, despite female founders raising only 935,000 dollars on average versus 2.12 million dollars for all-male teams.
For Germany, the EY Startup Barometer 2026 paints a sobering picture. Of approximately 7.8 billion euros in venture capital invested in 2025, 53 million euros went to all-female-led startups, barely one percent. Of 660 financed startups, only 21 had exclusively women on the founding team, representing three percent. Since 2017, venture capital invested in startups with at least one female founder has quadrupled in Germany. The direction is right, but the pace is far too slow.
Nineteen Percent and Declining
This phenomenon cannot be explained by quality deficiencies among female founders. The causes lie elsewhere. According to the analysis report "State of Female Founders 2026" from market research firm Theanna, 96 percent of all venture capital firms are led by men. This creates a systematic pattern in practice: investors tend to finance founder profiles similar to themselves.
The Female Founders Monitor 2025 from the German Startup Association documents a troubling trend. The share of startups with at least one woman on the founding team dropped in Germany from 21 percent in 2024 to 19 percent in 2025. Female founders are disproportionately active in B2C markets, particularly e-commerce, education, and health, which venture capitalists view as less scalable than Deep Tech or enterprise software. Remarkably, even in climate tech and green tech, where female founders represent 15 percent and growth expectations are high, underfunding persists.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a U.S. foundation for entrepreneurship research, documents in its analyses that female-led teams achieve comparable revenue with one-third less capital. For investors, this means less equity dilution and lower write-off risk for the same revenue target. The structural preference for more capital-intensive, male-led teams thus systematically delivers worse risk-adjusted returns.
In Comparison: Germany Behind Global Average
Global data from 2024 shows that all-female-founded startups worldwide accounted for 2.3 percent of total venture capital. Mixed teams with at least one female founder received an additional 14.1 percent. The global average is poor; Germany at one percent lags far behind.
In the U.S., the debate since the mid-2010s has gained more structure. Dedicated funds like the Female Founders Fund and several accelerators explicitly targeting female founders have created a market for this investment category. Britain, too, has launched state-backed programs through the British Business Bank. In Northern Europe, where capital provider transparency requirements and public seed-stage investments are more widespread, the share of female-cofounded startups in VC volume is noticeably higher than Germany's.
The Theanna report estimates the global economic opportunity from underfunding female founders at five trillion dollars, equivalent to Japan's gross domestic product.
Three Conditions for Accelerated Change
At current trends, capital parity between female- and male-founded companies would not arrive until 2065, according to Theanna's model. That's two generations, or from an investor's perspective, multiple complete fund cycles without tapping available return potential.
Three changes would shorten this timeline. First, mandatory transparency. Germany has a solid data foundation with the Female Founders Monitor, but it is collected voluntarily. Binding diversity reporting for VC firms, as discussed in some EU member states, would create structural pressure. Second, diversification within the VC sector itself. Globally, only 15.4 percent of female partners in venture capital firms make investment decisions. Third, public seed-stage investments as a market signal. KfW is preparing a new round of its growth fund for 2026. Whether it includes a diversity focus has not been publicly communicated.
The conclusion from the data is unambiguous: female founders are not a risk group. They are a systematically underutilized return resource.