📈 The startup stat that really matters
While the startup and VC industry has a natural and understandable tendency to be positive, when it comes to funding allocated to women, sugar-coating the reality does more harm than good.
You identify as a true startup person if, when faced with bad news, you manage to see the upside. It’s not a failure, it’s a lesson, for example. Or it’s not terrible data around the state of ecosystem funding, it’s a sign that we’ve come a long way.
That’s no shade on the ecosystem (resilience is everything in this game) or the incredible report put out by Cut Through Venture and Folklore Ventures earlier this week looking at The State of Australian Startup Funding. The depth and analysis that went into the report is impressive. It’s the kind of detail for which governments usually pay the likes of the big four a lot of money.
But there’s one stat I find it hard to be upbeat about, in an area where I think the industry’s natural inclination to be positive does more harm than good. And that’s gender equality. There is a broader conversation happening around all types of inclusion in the ecosystem, but given we are talking about 51% of Australian the population, I do want to hone in on gender.
The reality is that if the ecosystem's progress on improving gender equality was measured like a startup, investors would not accept the stats as “healthy growth”. Yet insignificant improvements are sold as “good news” under a standard so double that it’s in danger of collapsing in on itself.
