About
Despite having equal access to entrepreneurial resources, a significant gender gap in venture capital (VC) funding persists with female founders. Associate Professor Tyler Wry and PhD Student, Christopher Bruno of The Wharton School alongside PhD Student, Tiffany Yau of the USC Marshall School of Business analyzed data from over 26,000 ventures founded by students and recent alumni from the top 85 U.S. universities to empirically test whether these institutions act as “equalizers” in the entrepreneurial landscape. The white paper investigates why, even with similar human capital and access to the same support programs, women-led ventures continue to attract significantly less funding than those led by their male counterparts.
Challenge
To accurately assess the landscape of university-affiliated entrepreneurship, the researchers required a large dataset. They needed to gather comprehensive public profile data for every individual on LinkedIn who attended or graduated from one of the top 85 U.S. universities. The researchers link educational background to founding activity, where they aggregate and compare outcomes across universities. Individuals from their sample include both early-career and more experienced founders with education backgrounds ranging from undergraduate to graduate-level degrees. Thus, this study highlights broader patterns of entrepreneurial entry and funding associated with educational attainment. Manually collecting and organizing this vast amount of public information to identify founders, their ventures, and funding status would be an insurmountable task. In conjunction with The Bright Initiative, the researchers were able to gather this large-scale public web data, using the LinkedIn people’s profile dataset, forming the foundation of their analysis.
Impact
The white paper revealed that universities do little to close the gender funding gap. The findings showed that:
- Male entrepreneurs are over 70% more likely than women to attract VC funding
- Approximately 1 in 15 male-led ventures received investment
- About 1 in 25 women-led ventures secured funding
These results suggest that despite the equalizing potential of university ecosystems, deep-seated disparities remain. The research highlights that the issue is not simply about access to resources but points to broader systemic biases within the venture capital world, prompting a need for deeper intervention to ensure fair access to capital for all founders.
To read their full white paper, check out: Do Universities Close the Gender-Funding Gap in Entrepreneurship?
