{"id":1975,"date":"2018-08-16T11:28:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T11:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lafosse.com\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2025-07-18T15:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:41:30","slug":"only-13-of-decision-makers-in-venture-capital-are-womenheres-what-to-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lafosse.com\/insights\/only-13-of-decision-makers-in-venture-capital-are-womenheres-what-to-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Only 13% of decision-makers in Venture Capital are women\u2026here&#8217;s what to do about it"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>\u201cThe tech industry can be a powerful force for good. However, there\u2019s not always equal access to the opportunities it presents.&#8221; Baroness Martha Lane Fox, CBE Cross-Bench Peer, House of Lords Founder and Executive Chair, Doteveryone Director, Twitter.<\/h5>\n<p><em>Venture Capital is funding the future. Therefore, it&#8217;s imperative the decisions made by VCs are free from bias, and that they encourage their portfolio companies to hire from a diverse talent pool. This will have a knock-on effect on the wider tech industry. Unfortunately, VCs cannot promote diversity within their portfolios without first addressing the lack of diversity in their own organisations.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bvca.co.uk\/Portals\/0\/Documents\/Research\/2017%20Reports\/Women-in-UK-Venture-Capital-2017.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A study<\/a> of 160 active VC firms and over 1,500 employees, carried out by the non-profit partnership Diversity VC in May 2017, found that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Women comprise just 27% of the VC labour force compared to 47% in the U.K. labour force overall. This figure includes non-investment professionals within VC.<\/li>\n<li>When specifically considering investment roles (from the titles of Analyst to Partner) women are further underrepresented at only 18%. The equivalent figure for non-investment roles (such as Investor Relations, Marketing and Legal) stands at 43%.<\/li>\n<li>Women represent only 13% of decision-makers in VCs (decision-maker = An individual on an investment committee, typically an investment partner, who makes the final decision over which investments to make)<\/li>\n<li>Almost half of all firms have no women in their investment teams. Looking exclusively at decision makers, a staggering 66% of investment teams have no women decision-makers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Diversity VC is aiming to significantly improve female representation at a senior level in the industry, through working with firms to set targets that are both ambitious and achievable. Their industry-wide goal is to see women holding at least 20% of senior decision-making positions in U.K. VC by 2020.<\/p>\n<p>To help achieve this, they partnered with a number of industry experts including two La Fosse consultants, Tillie Hands, and Andrew Richardson, to co-write &#8216;Diversity in VC: A Practical Toolkit.&#8217; The toolkit is designed to help VCs recognise their own biases and drive diversity within their own teams, as well as their portfolios.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew and Tillie co-wrote Module 4 on &#8216;Offer Management and Induction,&#8217; including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Questions to ask prospective candidates to test how inclusive an atmosphere is promoted within your business<\/li>\n<li>How to tailor your job offer to suit the requirements of individuals from different backgrounds<\/li>\n<li>How to design an induction process, PDP and Buddy System which provides employees with a structured support network from Day one<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/diversity.vc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Diversity-VC-Toolkit-V4.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the toolkit here &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe tech industry can be a powerful force for good. However, there\u2019s not always equal access to the opportunities it presents.&#8221; Baroness Martha Lane Fox, CBE Cross-Bench Peer, House of Lords Founder and Executive Chair, Doteveryone Director, Twitter. Venture Capital is funding the future. Therefore, it&#8217;s imperative the decisions made by VCs are free from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[687,675,665,663,673,691,680],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attracting-and-retaining-and-developing-talent","category-building-your-company-culture","category-diversity","category-hiring","category-leadership","category-leadership-diversity","category-women-in-tech"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Only 13% of decision-makers in Venture Capital are women\u2026here&#039;s what to do about it - La Fosse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lafosse.com\/insights\/only-13-of-decision-makers-in-venture-capital-are-womenheres-what-to-do-about-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Only 13% of decision-makers in Venture Capital are women\u2026here&#039;s what to do about it - La Fosse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cThe tech industry can be a powerful force for good. 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