The funding gap in startups, explained plainly

The funding gap in startups is one of those topics that gets reported regularly without getting much clearer. The headline numbers are familiar. The explanations are less so.

Part of the gap is upstream of the funding decision itself. Founders without prior access to the relevant networks have fewer warm introductions. Warm introductions matter more in venture funding than the meritocratic story tends to admit. The pool of founders who make it to a pitch meeting is shaped before anyone evaluates an idea.

Part of the gap is in the pitch room. There is now a reasonably consistent body of evidence that the questions asked of women founders tend to skew toward risk and defence, while those asked of men tend to skew toward growth and opportunity. Founders answer the questions they are asked. The answers shape the impression.

Part of it is structural. Funds raised from a narrow set of backers tend to invest in a narrow set of founders. Funds that have widened their backers, partners and deal sources tend to see a wider pipeline, and a different portfolio follows.

None of this is a single fix. It is a collection of decisions made by a collection of people, repeated thousands of times a year. That is why it persists. It is also why it is changeable — slowly, deliberately, by the same kind of accumulation that built it in the first place.