Women Founders Still Systematically Underfunded Despite Signs of Progress
New 2024 DACH Report shows mixed-gender teams rising-but women-only startups remain shut out of capital.
Key Findings from the 2024 Report:
- Total startup funding in DACH grew to €10.09 billion. Only 2% went to women-only teams.
- Mixed-gender teams nearly doubled their share of closed rounds year-over-year, securing 22.8% of capital.
- In Austria, women-only teams received 0.1% of total funding-down from 1.3% in 2023.
- Early-stage investments clearly dominated the funding landscape, highlighting a persistent scarcity of growth capital for startups aiming to scale.
- Despite growing visibility and innovation, only 11.2% of funded founders in Austria are women, even though the overall share of female founders has risen from 17% to 22% according to the Austrian Startup Monitor 2024.
- Mental health, AI strategy, and diversity remain unaddressed-founders report gaps in investor support and systemic inclusion.
Vienna, 5 June 2025 – Female Founders, in collaboration with the Vienna Business Agency, today released the State of Fundraising 2024 report, delivering a data-driven call to action on gender equity in the DACH startup ecosystem. Despite early signs of progress in the inclusion of mixed-gender founding teams, the capital gap for women-only teams remains drastic, entrenched, and systemically damaging to innovation.
“Progress is happening-but it is not yet enough,”
– Natascha Fürst, CEO Female Founders
Funding Still Favors Familiar Faces
While early-stage innovation is thriving, women-led teams continue to be locked out of capital at scale. In 2024, male-only teams received the overwhelming majority of funding, while female-only teams closed just 6% of rounds and secured less than 2% of total investment volume across DACH. In Austria, this figure dropped to just €0.7 million across the entire year.
Yet where diverse teams do raise capital, they succeed: Austria’s third-largest round-€63 million for Prewave-was led by a mixed-gender team, signaling the power and scalability of inclusive founding models.
“We need more than good intentions-we need bold, structural support for female founders.”
– Natascha Fürst, CEO Female Founders
Systemic Barriers Continue to Undermine the Success of Women Founders
The latest data lays bare how startup ecosystems across the DACH region continue to fall short in enabling the success of women-led ventures, not due to lack of ambition or innovation, but because the systems meant to support them remain unequal:
- Founders are burning out, yet investor support for mental health is nearly nonexistent, exposing a systemic disregard for the sustainability of entrepreneurial leadership.
- Entrenched funding biases persist: pattern-matching continues to favor familiar (and male-dominated) founder archetypes, shutting out those who don’t fit outdated molds, regardless of their innovation or market potential.
These barriers are not reflections of founder capability, they are the result of an ecosystem that has yet to fully embrace inclusive, equity-driven practices.
Vienna as a Model for Inclusive Innovation
Vienna remains the beating heart of Austria’s startup ecosystem, hosting 61% of the country’s funding rounds. The Vienna Business Agency (VBA) has led Europe in embedding equity into startup support, with gender bonus points in funding, mandatory DEI strategies, and multilingual, bias-conscious programming.
“Successful entrepreneurs, especially white men, need to open their networks to women founders in order to help break down systemic barriers.”
– Vienna Business Agency
Even with such advances, women’s access to private capital remains painfully limited, highlighting the need for coordinated action across public institutions, venture funds, LPs, and tech ecosystems.
Now is the time to bridge the gap between values and action
Now is the time to bridge the gap between values and action.
By investing in women-led and founded teams, we can fuel innovation, deliver strong returns, and shape a more equitable future for entrepreneurship.
If women started businesses at the same rate as men, Europe’s GDP could increase by up to €3.15 trillion by 2050, a boost of nearly 9.6%, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. This isn’t just about fairness – it’s one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.