How to fund more female founders, according to an EIC board member

Chiara Petrioli knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship in Europe. 

Eight years ago, she founded Rome-based underwater monitoring and communication startup WSense, and has raised more than €22m for the company over three investment rounds. For the past two years she’s also been a board member of the European Innovation Council (EIC), Europe’s most active deeptech investor, and she’s passionate about more of the institution's resources flowing towards female entrepreneurs.

“It’s very wise to invest in female-led companies. If you look at the numbers, they overperform male-led companies,” she says.

But, four years on from the EIC publishing its first statement on gender and diversity, calling for systemic change in Europe’s innovation landscape, there is still a long way to go, and female-founded companies in Europe raised just 12% of VC investment in 2024.

So, what progress has been made in trying to improve gender representation in Europe’s entrepreneurial sector, and what needs to happen now to try and keep levelling the playing field?

In an interview with Sifted, Petrioli explains what the EIC has achieved in the last four years, and what needs to happen next.

Sifted: What progress has been made in the four years since the EIC issued its first statement on gender and diversity?

Chiara Petrioli: We are operating in a situation where a very small number of female-led companies (teams with a woman in the senior team) are backed by investors, and where only around 22% of deeptech companies are female-led. Despite this, the EIC has achieved the incredible result of going from 8% of our investments going to female-led companies in 2020, to 30% in 2024.

To reach that target we set up a number of programmes supporting women (or women led startups) such as the EIC Women Leadership Programme and Women TechEU. They not only back these startups and empower women leading them, but also help the companies get ready to apply for the EIC Accelerator.

We’ve also increased the number of female jury members selecting companies, and paid a lot of attention to biases on those selection panels.

There are still structural gaps in gender representation in tech, what are the most pressing problems to solve now?

Generally, it’s a hard life for female founders in Europe and a number of studies that have been funded or backed by the EIC like GENDEX [Europe’s first gender and diversity index] show some very worrying things.

Female-founded or female-led companies tend to raise less money at lower valuations with worse governance conditions, it takes them more time to raise, and when you look at the later stage rounds it becomes harder and harder for them to get funded. This is despite the fact that research shows that female-founded companies actually generate better returns for investors than male-led equivalents.

If we want a better future for Europe, where we build large, international companies that let us lead on the global stage, we need to give proper representation to ideas coming from female founders, so we need to unlock this.

How do you unlock that?

We need more female-led funds. We need to also have an open debate about these issues with investors, and look at giving female founders different routes and opportunities to speak to them.

One of the things we’re looking at is more networking opportunities with investors, to give female founders more time than just an elevator pitch to explain the case for investing in them. 

We also need to strengthen mentoring, and give a stronger message that we are working to make this happen, and we are doing that by setting ourselves the target that we want to go from 30% of our investments going to female-led companies to 50%.

What advice would you give to female founders?

I would say that in the beginning it’s always tough to find investors willing to back you, and it’s important to focus on keeping costs low and proving your product or service in the market before seeking funding.

Finding the right investors is crucial — those with strong biases against female founders are unlikely to be the right partners for your journey. Also remember that female founders tend to be very strong, resilient and efficient at running companies, and I know many amazing women entrepreneurs who are really overachieving in terms of results, in spite of the challenges in front of them.

Take full advantage of mentorship opportunities, leverage your network and try to get to know other entrepreneurs who have made it and learn from them and, above all, don’t give up on your dreams.

And what can men be doing to support female entrepreneurs?

When it comes to investors, they need to look at the quantitative evidence that female founders overperform the average in terms of return on investment.

More generally speaking, we need to nurture a new culture in younger generations, so it’s up to parents and particularly dads to try and break down gender biases early on.

Men must also learn to recognise that women have a different style of leadership, that is often kinder and empathetic, and that a different style doesn’t equal a lack of leadership. We also need to all realise there’s a value in diversity, and different points of view and different opinions are good for any organisation.

Who are some role models that female founders can look to?

I don’t usually name names, but I’ll reference a recent article by Sifted, highlighting eight female-founded quantum startups in Europe. These are companies working at all different levels of the quantum ecosystem, from cryptography, to computing to algorithms, on really hard tech.

I’m happy to say that five of those eight have been backed by the EIC, which I see as a big success and we’re very proud to support brilliant women like them.