Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The LSU Tigers win their first NCAA title, Sanna Marin loses Finland's election, and female founders weren't immune to last year's economic climate—but they're displaying resilience. Have a productive Monday.
- Resilient founders. In 2022, female founders saw U.S. venture funding fall 28%. But that stat illustrated resilience; overall, startups saw a 37% decline in venture funding. That's from a new analysis of Crunchbase and PitchBook data released by the venture capital firm Female Founders Fund, Fortune is the first to report.
The data show that while female founders have been affected by the economic climate, they haven't been disproportionately impacted. That's a welcome discovery following fears that underrepresented founders would bear the brunt of VCs' retreat.
“Many of these female founders have not had as easy access to capital as their male peers, which has made them better equipped to navigate a difficult fundraising environment,” says Female Founders Fund founding partner Anu Duggal. “As a result, they have been able to adjust their business models, shifting their focus from growth at all costs to prioritizing profitability.”
In total, companies with at least one female founder received 18.4% of U.S. venture funding, or $42.6 billion.
Female founders have shown their resilience in other ways, Female Founders Fund found. They use 25% less capital per month than other founders—a useful approach to running a business in an environment in which the average time between a seed and Series A round has increased by five months.
The value of exits for female-founded companies fell from a total value of $73.3 billion in 2021 to $10.9 billion in 2022, in line with industry trends. Still, women-led businesses claimed a greater share of total exit value last year. Female-founded startups represented 18.2% of the 2022 exit value, up from 9.5% a year earlier.
Overall, women-led startups have not been immune to market trends. But the economic downturn hasn't quashed all the progress female-founded companies have made in recent years. While there were only 13 new women-led unicorns in 2022—markedly less than the 83 in 2021 and out of a total of 332—that's still more than the four women-led startups valued at more than $1 billion in 2013.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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