Today we’re celebrating National Women’s Day in the U.S. and so it seems fitting to share some research that highlights the power of women working in Venture Capital.
A recent study in Harvard Business Review demonstrates that VC firms that increased the number of female partners by 10% experienced a 1.5% increase in fund returns each year and had 9.7% more profitable exits. This is a significant improvement considering only ~29% of VC investments have a profitable exit.
Given this data, it’s shocking that women make up just 8% of the VC industry to date. Thankfully, groups like Women in VC, Allraise, and Recast Capital are working to change this.
Keep reading for tips to measure and improve gender equity across your portfolio.
1) Use Formulas to calculate % Female Employees
Most firms are already collecting the metric ‘Total Headcount’ from their portfolio companies. Consider collecting ‘Number of Female Employees’ on a quarterly or annual basis and using formulas to calculate ‘% Female Employees’ across your portfolio.
2) Set up a Portfolio metric dashboard to benchmark gender equity across your portfolio
In a few clicks, Portfolio metric dashboards tell you the total, minimum, maximum, and median values for any metric and also let you benchmark companies against portfolio quartiles. Learn more.
3) Create a ‘Female (co)founded’ segment to keep track of gender diversity across your deals
You can set up any custom segment in Visible and use them to slice and filter your data.
Ready to explore using Visible to measure gender equity across your portfolio?
More Resources on Women in VC:
