It’s 2020, and Men Still Receive More Start-up Funding than Women. Why?

London Business School’s Dr Dana Kanze offers insight into why men and women are treated differently in the boardroom – and a lot of it comes down to the phrasing of questions during pitches.

She pulls from her personal experience when she and her male co-founder tried to raise money for their mobile tech company at TechCrunch Disrupt – and they both got very different questions from potential investors.

Kanze said she was mainly asked questions about what could possibly go wrong in her company (she calls these “prevention” questions), whereas in comparison, her male co-founder was asked questions about how amazing everything could be (Kanze refers to these as “promotion” questions).

Her research – published in the Academy of Management Journal – takes a closer look at the relationships between the questions entrepreneurs are asked and the funding they get.

Kanze’s findings indicate that if men and women were asked the same questions, they'd be equally successful in raising money. She admits the subconscious cycle of bias needs to be broken, and that’s what her team aimed to do.

• Tell a story
• When getting ready to pitch, try and gather all of the learnings and experience you’ve had so far and tell a story about you that has a past, present and future
• If you’re innovating, then you can illustrate what the world will look like with your idea in motion
• Investors see hundreds of products and meet lots of entrepreneurs, so it’s important to make yourself stand out. Investors want to be moved by your idea, but it’s the entrepreneurs who have the chance to entice investors first. Be who you are and let people decide if they want a piece of the action.
• It’s important to outline your company’s needs and product milestones when asking for capital, but you also need to understand – and demonstrate your knowledge of – the capital market environment. If you’re aware fundraising may be harder to do next year, try to raise as much as you can this year.

Of course, the best preparation in the world can’t help you completely overcome systemic gender bias. What if you aren’t asked the right questions in your pitch? What if you’re still treated differently to male entrepreneurs?

The best thing you can arguably do is conduct your own research on investors before talking to them and try to find VCs with a track record for investing in female founders. Get in touch via female founders in the industry to find the right VCs to talk to.

Above all else, make sure the investment focus of each VC you meet fits your company’s sector – it’ll make getting the “yes” so much easier when you are strategically aligned.