Investing To Change The Status Quo

“If women want to change the status quo, they should invest in the tech that does that.”

This was the refreshingly bold statement made by one of the (female) speakers at the Web Summit in Lisbon this week. It stood out for many reasons, not least of all because so much of the conversation about women, sports tech, startups and investment is invariably pretty negative.

Here is some key data on the subject:

• 60% of women invest in stocks; 68% for retirement
• Women investors, starting younger, achieve better returns than men by up to 1%
• US research has found that
  • startups with at least one female founder outperform all-male-founded teams by 63%
  • female founders deliver more than two times as much per dollar invested than male-owned companies
• UK data has revealed that
  • the proportion of female-founded businesses has not only remained stagnant at c.27% but is actually dropping, with the percentage of older female entrepreneurs (those over 50) decreasing by 1.37%
  • For every £1 of venture capital (VC) investment in the UK, all-female founder teams get less than 1%, all-male founder teams get 89%, and mixed-gender teams 10%

Looking at the quote and those stats together, what does this tell us? Logically, that men are best placed to create the technologies that change the way women can experience the world. However you look at it, that feels highly flawed – how do they know what we want (what we really, really want), especially when so few ask us?

Over the past few years it has become very apparent that, when it comes to tech, what feels ‘instinctive’ for men feels far from that for women.

To cite just one personal example: someone recently suggested a remote tool to help a group of us, three men and three women, align on a project. The men all ‘got it’ immediately; the women – all intelligent, capable and from a wide age range – found it completely unworkable. I did some digging: the software concerned was designed by a company founded by an all-male team, and a quick look on LinkedIn suggested that its programmers are nearly all men too.

Of all the many, many young sports tech businesses I meet daily, astoundingly few employ women. A sizeable percentage are targeting mainstream sports such as soccer, cricket and rugby. These sports are growing their women’s games at a great rate – yet I cannot remember hearing any of these technology providers thinking strategically about using the women’s code as a route to market.

I appreciate that the money in women’s sport is currently much lower but as the voices of female athletes get louder, and more women enter the investment arena, aren’t these men missing a trick?

As female investment gathers pace, the industry will be reshaped to serve our visions and our needs. Create technology that reflects and respects this and you will be on to something.