By: Geri Stengel, Forbes Contributor
If you think tech founders are motivated to start their companies by money, you are wrong. Only a small percent of male founders (15%) and a tiny percentage of female founders (2%) are motivated by money, according to Gender Differences in Entrepreneurship: Voices of Founders and Funders conducted by Illuminate Venture, a venture capital firm. For most, their primary motive is to bring their ideas to market: 70% of women and 60% of men have this goal.
The higher motivation among women is consistent with The 2017 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity: National Trends, which found that women are more opportunity-driven than men. Kauffman is the largest nonprofit researching entrepreneurship
And yet, only 15% of US venture dollars in 2017 went to teams with a female founder, according to All Raise, a nonprofit that wants to increase the percentage of venture funding going to companies with a female founder. The 15% number differs from the often cited 2%, which refers to all-female founder teams. The reality is that homogeneous teams perform less well, so having a diverse team improves the performance of venture-backed companies, according to research conducted by Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali of Harvard Business School. This is consistent with research by First Round Capital, which found that companies with at least one female founder performed better than those with all-male founding teams.
