Women in digital deep tech – a landscape of scaling startups
Diversity and inclusion has been a key topic of conversation across the world in 2020, and the tech industry is no different.
All-male founding teams raised 90.8% of European venture capital in 2020, the highest percentage of the last five years. Access to funding and scaling support has been a key challenge for female founders. By increasing visibility of venture-backed female-led startups, it can help to accelerate those that have already found traction, and create role models in female entrepreneurship to foster a pipeline of next generation women-led startups.
In 2019, EIT Digital Accelerator launched the first edition of the European Female-Led Digital Deep Tech Startup & Scaleup Landscape, aiming to highlight successful deep tech ventures led by female founders. Building up on that initiative, in 2020 we’ve teamed up to build a more comprehensive and interactive landscape.
So far we have jointly mapped 88 female co-founded European deep tech startups that have raised at least €2M in funding or are generating at least €1M in revenue. The startups are arranged by five digital deep tech categories, as identified by EIT Digital to relate to major digital trends: Digital Tech, Digital Industry, Digital Cities, Digital Finance and Digital Wellbeing.
The 88 startups included in the landscape have raised almost €1B and a median of €6M. They collectively employ almost 6000 people, with a median size of almost 34 employees. The most represented countries are: United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, France and Sweden.
If you run or know a deep tech startup with a female founder or co-founder and want to be included in the landscape, nominate them for inclusion here, and find out more about EIT Digital’s support for women-led deep tech startups.