Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / How Solo Female Founders Face Higher Investor Scrutiny
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, we talk a lot on this show about the subtle ways bias creeps into women's careers. But there's one area where the data is especially stark, and it's fundraising. Luna: You mean the fact that women founders get a fraction of venture capital? That's well-documented. Lucas: Right, but I want to go deeper than the top-line number. A 2025 PitchBook study looked at the actual questions investors ask founders during pitches. And they found that solo female founders — women pitching without a male co-founder — get asked a fundamentally different set of questions than male co-founding teams. Luna: Different how? Lucas: Investors asked solo female founders 65 percent more prevention-focused questions — things like 'How will you protect against competition?' or 'What's your downside risk?' — versus promotion-focused questions like 'What's your growth plan?' or 'How big can this get?' Male co-founding teams got the opposite ratio. Luna: That maps onto something I've heard from our listeners. One woman told me that in every pitch, she felt like she was defending her ability to execute, not selling her vision. Lucas: Before we go deeper — if this kind of research is useful to you in your own career or investing decisions, we'd love your support. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes — it's a choice we made to keep the conversation focused. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a way to keep this ad-free. Luna: Yeah, it really does help us keep digging into these specific studies and stories. Okay, back to the pitches — so what's driving that 65 percent gap? Lucas: The researchers think it's implicit stereotype activation. Investors — both male and female — unconsciously associate entrepreneurship with stereotypically male traits like risk-taking and assertiveness. So when a solo woman pitches, their brain primes them to look for reasons she might fail. Luna: Which means she has to overcome not just her business risk, but also an extra layer of doubt. Lucas: Exactly. And the study found that this question bias directly correlated with funding outcomes. Pitches that got more prevention questions received 30 percent less funding on average, even when controlling for business quality. Luna: So it's not just about what's in the deck — it's about the conversation around the deck. Lucas: Right. And one founder I spoke with, Sarah Chen, who runs a B2B SaaS platform, experienced this firsthand. She pitched twenty VCs in 2024. She got almost no promotion questions. Every single meeting was about her go to market risk, her team's lack of 'founder-market fit' — which is a term I hate, by the way. Luna: What did she do? Lucas: She recorded her pitches, analyzed the questions, then rewrote her deck to preempt the prevention frame. She added a slide titled 'Why Our Risk Is Lower Than You Think' — she led with her risk mitigation before they could ask. She also framed her growth as 'we're already doing X' rather than 'we plan to do X.' That subtle shift from future to present tense. Luna: And did it work? Lucas: Her follow-up meeting rate went up 40 percent. She still didn't close every round, but the conversations shifted. Investors started asking her about market size instead of just defensibility. Luna: That's a great tactical takeaway. But it also puts the burden on the founder to compensate for bias, which isn't fair. Lucas: Totally. And the study points to a structural fix, too: when investors were given a checklist of questions to ask — a script, essentially — the bias disappeared. Structured interviews reduce the room for implicit bias to leak in. Luna: So firms that standardize their pitch process might not only be fairer — they might also miss fewer good deals. Lucas: That's the argument. If you're only asking prevention questions, you're screening for downside, not upside. And you could pass on the next Stripe or Canva because the founder was a solo woman who didn't fit the mold. Luna: Let's talk about the solo founder piece specifically. Why do you think solo female founders face even more scrutiny than female co-founding teams? Lucas: There's research from Harvard Business Review that suggests investors see co-founders as a risk buffer. Two people means shared decision-making, complementary skills. A solo founder — especially a woman — triggers a 'single point of failure' concern. Luna: Even though plenty of successful companies were solo-founded by men. Lucas: Right. Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell — all solo male founders. But they didn't face the same level of skepticism. The bias is layered: gender plus solo founder status equals a double penalty. Luna: So what would you tell a solo female founder listening right now? Beyond the pitch language advice. Lucas: First, know that this bias exists so you don't internalize the rejection. Second, consider bringing on a co-founder — not because you need one for the business, but because the market demands it. It's a sad reality, but it might improve your odds. Luna: Or find investors who've backed solo women before. Track record matters. Lucas: Great point. There are firms now that explicitly track their question bias — like Forerunner Ventures and BBG Ventures — and they train their partners to ask balanced questions. Luna: So the fix is partly individual strategy, partly institutional change. Lucas: And partly just awareness. The PitchBook study got a lot of press, and I've heard from VC partners who said, 'We didn't realize we were doing that.' Simply naming the pattern can shift behavior. Luna: For me, the most striking number is 65 percent. That's not a marginal difference. Lucas: No, it's structural. And it compounds over thousands of pitches, millions of dollars. That's why we keep coming back to these small, specific biases — they add up. Luna: Alright, so next time you're in a pitch meeting, listen to the questions. If they're all prevention, you know what's happening. Lucas: And if you're an investor, audit your own questions. It might be the easiest way to improve your deal flow. Luna: Let's leave it there for today. Thanks for listening.