Bitget Study Finds Female-Led Web3 Startups an Underfunded Minority

The new age of the internet has an ancient problem with gender diversity.

A new study on blockchain startup funding patterns by Bitget Research found that female-led enterprises are a minority and that women have a more challenging time securing investment into their projects than their male counterparts.

Overall, less than 9% of all new projects in the space are led by women, and during the past two years, they have only managed to capture $1.77 billion, or 6.34%, of the total funding going into the space.

Funding is essential for the success of any new enterprise, and securing it, as the study explains, can have as much to do with "the team's composition and the founder's personality" as with the project's merits.

Several factors influence the capacity of women to excite investors, of which investor bias against female projects and management is just one. The study highlights how all blockchain startups had a hard time harvesting investor interest after the Terra/Luna and FTX crashes. Due to the bearish sentiment that set upon the crypto ecosystem in 2022 new investment deals declined by more than 61%.

The cryptocurrency exchange's research arm found that there are now signs that the downward trend is over and women are at the start of a new age of blockchain funding. Investment deals rose in the third quarter of 2023, with the number of female-led startups almost doubling from 16 to 31 between July and September. Male-led blockchain startups numbered 333 during the same period, less than at the start of the year and only 6% more than in the previous quarter.

The results align with a more prominent trend regarding gender disparities in Web3. A study published a year ago by the Boston Consulting Group found that only 13% of founders' teams included one woman, and only 3% were all female.

The workforce of decentralized technology companies is mainly composed of males, and 27% of female workers are primarily in non-technical roles. In NFTs, a little over 15% of artists are women, earning only 5% of the total sales.

While the picture isn't the brightest in gender equality matters, according to the Bitget research, "positive changes can be noted during the study period."

When looking at investors' appetite for risk, the study revealed that more are ready to lend to women-led projects in earlier stages of development. Investment deals with female blockchain projects also recovered from the crypto winter much faster than the startups led by men.

Bitget is confident that "with an increase in the number of startups with female founders, investors will be able to see that their prejudices are unfounded."

To help turn the page on the gender inequality chapter, the crypto exchange announced that it would be spending $10 million in incubation programs and pitch competitions for woman-led initiatives. Through its Blockchain4Her program, an initiative aiming to mitigate the challenges of female entrepreneurs in Web3, Bitget also committed to organising a Women in Blockchain Summit & Awards.