Beat Funding Bias Initiative
The Beat Funding Bias Initiative raises awareness on unconscious biases in funding settings and empowers investors, founders, experts, coaches and their communities to overcome these biases by providing specific tools.
Supported by
How investors and female founders can profit from knowing about unconscious gender biases in the fundraising process.
We ask men to win and women not to lose
Based on the study ‘We ask men to win and women not to lose: closing the gender gap in startup funding’ of the Columbia and Harvard Business Schools the FE+MALE Think Tank designed BFBI – The Beat Funding Bias Initiative.
The goal of BFBI is to make sure everyone, regardless of their gender, has equal funding opportunities. We are committed to achieving this by raising awareness through workshops and providing educational resources through mentoring to our community.
“By promoting gender-bias-free practices, we can create a more inclusive and diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem, which in turn leads to more innovative ideas and better business outcomes.”
Luiza Dobre
Komed Health AG
“Pushing for gender bias-free in funding settings is the right thing to do because it could foster the creation of more innovative businesses, greater diversity, and new opportunities for the entire society.”
Daniela Marino
CUTISS
“The BFBI project can add a lot of value in the ecosystem for female founders. It can create a common ground in which founders independent of gender could flourish and have access to equal capital conditions and funding opportunities.”
Myriam Lingg
macu4
“I do believe that the outcome of this project can potentially help many entrepreneurs, myself included, increase the chances to get more funding and with that, help the start-up move forward and create higher value.”
Yurena Seguí
Duramon
Why is it important to overcome these unconscious gender biases?
Unconscious gender biases result in missed business opportunities for investors and make it more difficult for female founders to scale their businesses.
Gender biases mean that we treat a person more or less favorable based on their gender. If biases happen unconsciously, it can cause harm without you even being aware that it influences your decisions.
These biases can be systemic and deeply ingrained in society, making it difficult for women and men to overcome them or even to identify them as an influencing factor during funding rounds.
This leads to:
- fewer investments in women-led businesses
- missed business opportunities
- less diversity and therefore less innovation
How do gender biases influence the funding process?
The way investors ask their questions influences the way entrepreneurs respond and therefore it has a huge impact on the funding:
- Promotion-focused questions emphasize on growth-oriented gains and tend to result in higher investments.
- Prevention-focused questions emphasize on non-losses and tend to result in lower investments.
Naturally, the answers match the style of the questions. Promotion-oriented questions are replied with promotion-oriented answers and prevention-focused questions with prevention-oriented answers.
As female and male investors tend to ask male entrepreneurs mainly promotion-focused questions and female entrepreneurs mainly prevention-focused question this results in a huge gap in the funding.
What can I as an investor or female founder do about it?
The FE+MALE Think Tank is providing a systematic approach to ensure gender equity with all it’s benefits for investors, female founders and society. In a pilot project in 2023 we created two online tools for investors and female founders to test their biases:
- assessment tool for investors
- survey, a training tool for female founders
Additionally, it helps your team or organization to identify expertise, activities, opportunities and gender equity impact to align the organization for branding purposes.
Whether you are a female founder or an investor take the survey to find out your own gender biases.
Resources
About us
Our community is the heart and soul of everything we do at FE+MALE Think Tank. We believe that together, males and females, we can create a more just and equal society. With the Beat Funding Bias Initiative, we strive to connect our community with the tools and resources they need to succeed, whether through mentorship programs, networking events, consultative services and or educational workshops.
We understand that navigating the world of entrepreneurship can be intimidating, especially for women who have historically faced systemic barriers.
Whether you are and entrepreneur or an investor we invite you to join us in our efforts to break down funding barriers and create more opportunities for female entrepreneurs in Switzerland. Together, we can build a more equitable future.