Blog Article

Calling All Female Founders: Apply to the Stellar Matching Fund!

Author

Denelle Dixon

Publishing date

Women

Matching fund

When I heard that only 5% of crypto entrepreneurs are female, I was disappointed – but not shocked. Then I did some digging. According to Crunchbase, only 9% of all funds deployed to technology startups went to founding teams that included at least one woman. Their data also revealed that, for the first eight months of 2021, companies with solely female founders raised just 2.2 percent of all venture funding.

Those numbers are sobering. But they serve as a powerful (if painful) reminder that there is so much opportunity to bring female founders and entrepreneurs into the folds of crypto.

When we first announced the launch of the Matching Fund, we expressed the importance of investing in companies at the earlier stages of development; that to provide equitable access to the world’s financial infrastructure, we need to provide businesses all over the world access to capital, especially risk capital, so they can grow and thrive.

The truth is, to build a more inclusive, better financial system, we need to have more diverse perspectives building it, too – which includes women. If you’re looking to leverage Stellar’s strengths for your business, please apply to the Matching Fund. We want more women to bring their ideas, perspectives, and projects to Stellar and are committed to working with such women to build a more inclusive future.

This is a small step towards creating a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem, and only the first. We look forward to continuing our work in this space and joining the coalition of those already bringing awareness to this issue. If you want to be kept in the loop, please follow us on Twitter/LinkedIn and stay tuned!