Want more women founders? Start by paying them more.
Startup founders are often paid modest salaries, or no salary at all. Brighte CEO Katherine McConnell says that’s holding many women back.
If you want more women in startups, we need to start paying founders more. That is the view of Brighte CEO Katherine McConnell, who is more qualified than most to speak about such issues.
McConnell is the only solo women startup founder in Australia to have raised more than $100 million for her clean energy retail company. A feat she pulled off in 2020 in a single round, one of only three women that year who received VC backing.
McConnell spoke to Capital Brief after she raised the issue at a panel on "In the World of Finance, Where are the Women?" at the Fintech Intersekt 2023 conference in Melbourne this week.
As reported in Capital Brief, solely women founded startups collectively raised $196 million in FY23. That was the second highest amount recorded, slightly behind the record $210 million raised in FY20 (the year McConnell raised) but more than double the $83 million from FY22. Yet is still only represents 3.9% of all private capital raised.
McConnell said the current benchmarking of startup CEOs is wrong - “it starts at zero” - and excludes women who often don’t have the same risk appetite or salary needs.
Startup founders are often on modest salaries, or not drawing salaries at all, offset by ownership in the company.
“Right now the only people that are able to do that are your tech bros or those with families around them who are behind them and saying ‘yeah, live at home’, we’ll support you and fund you,” McConnell says.
“Why would women choose [startups] voluntarily with a sane mind as a career option if you're not going to get certainty of a reasonable salary? You can't just live on the whiff of a dream that you'll be a unicorn and there'll be a big payday at some point.”
She says women who run global businesses and have to travel need to employ nannies because their kids can’t go to daycare. “When they start to travel those expenses come out of their salary,” she says.
