Irish female founders raised more than €230 million in 2021, this is more than twice the record €105 million raised the previous year.
The publication of these findings, which come from a new TechIreland report, coincide with International Women’s Day. The report showed that in 2021, 55 tech start-up and scale-up companies with a female founder or co-founder raised €230 million through Venture Capital, Grants, and Angel Investments.
The report also highlights the gender balance within the investor community. Only 20% of the partners in Irish VCs are female and 30% of the mid-level team.
TechIreland tracks more than 470 female founded companies, 16% of the overall start-ups and scaleups on the island. Of the 311 companies that raised funding in 2021, 18% are female founded.
As in previous years, the outliers raise a large portion of the overall funding. However young companies are scaling and raising larger, growth capital rounds. For the first time, eight female founded companies raised over €10 million each, or 70% of the total. In 2020, only two companies raised over €10 million.
Despite the huge jump in funding, companies with a female founder still raise less than the general population of tech companies. While female founders on average doubled their investment to €4.1 million last year, that was still significantly less than the average of €5.3 million for all companies.
Despite significant support by Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start-up Funding and the Competitive Start-up Funding for early-stage companies, the report shows a drop in the number of early stage rounds between €100,000 and €1 million.
Healthtech, specifically life sciences, remains the top sector among female founders, adding to €117 million or 50% of the total. In terms of the number of companies funded, Enterprise Solutions tops the chart with 35% or 19 of the 55 companies. Sectors such as cleantech and fintech recorded marginal increases in investment activity, whereas others like agritech, education and consumer products saw a marginal decline.
The report also shows that Dublin-based female founded companies received more than 66% (€152 million) of the total. That is higher than the 46% share Dublin companies made in 2020. However, there were significant investments in female-founded companies in Galway, Cork, and Mayo.
Funding into Female-founded companies in Northern Ireland represents less than 1% of the total funding raised, well down on their 4% share in 2020.
“Diversity is really important as all the research shows that diverse teams perform better,” said John O’Dea, chief executive of TechIreland. “From an investor’s perspective, and for Ireland, better performance means more wealth and employment. These are great results, but they are not grounds for complacency – females-led tech businesses still only get 13% of the investment into Irish tech. We can and must do better than this.”
Sarah Jane Larkin of the Irish Venture Capital Association said: “We can be confident that the investment climate for female founded companies in Ireland is improving. However, none of us can be happy with a world where women secure only 13% of all funding, and we must now focus on efforts to accelerate the funding of female founded start-ups.’’
‘‘Back in 2011 only 7% of EI backed HPSUs included a woman founder,” said Sheelagh Daly of Enterprise Ireland. “By putting a spotlight on this and providing capability and funding supports specifically targeting women, this has now tripled to over 21%.’’
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