More than a third of new venture-backed Chicago startups have at least one woman co-founder.
That's according to a new report released by Chicago:Blend on Wednesday that shows that Chicago ranks well when it comes to female representation in the tech industry. Chicago:Blend partnered with World Business Chicago on the report, which used PitchBook and Crunchbase data to examine companies that raised venture capital between 2018 and 2023.
The firm conducted similar analyses in nine other similarly sized tech centers across the country, including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
"Fundraising for startups has just been hard in general, especially in the past year, and when times are like this, underrepresented founders are disproportionately affected," Chicago:Blend CEO Joey Mak told Chicago Inno.
Of the nearly $3 billion raised by 307 new venture-backed Chicago startups that launched in the past five years, 112 of them, or 36.5%, had at least one woman founder.
The next closest city to Chicago was Boston with 32.5%.
That said, the 112 new Chicago startups with at least one woman founder collectively raised $434 million, or approximately 15% of the total VC capital raised for a much smaller percentage of the total funding.
"This tells us that new woman-founded companies in Chicago are raising smaller funding rounds when compared to women-founded startups in other metro regions," the report said.
Mak said there's a lot of historical reasons for that, including issues of implicit bias and lack of access to the right networks.
"We are also looking at diversity among VCs and people who are actually making investment decisions," Mak said. "When we started looking at the data, 25% of VCs in Chicago were women in 2018. That number is more than 30% now, and we've seen that positive momentum in other demographic groups."
New Chicago startups ranked well compared with their peers when it came to other diversity measures as well.
The data showed 75 new startups, or 24.4%, had at least one founder of color and raised 44% of total funding at $1.28 billion. Only Miami had a higher rate at 25.56%.
Chicago also had the second-highest percentage of new Latino founders at 8.1%, behind only Miami at 20%, and the second-highest percentage of Black founders at 10.4%, behind only Atlanta's 17.6%.
The report comes as Chicago:Blend and other organizations face enhanced scrutiny after Atlanta venture firm Fearless Fund was sued over its program for Black women entrepreneurs. If successful, the lawsuit could stop the the Fearless Fund from administering its funding and programs aimed specifically at Black female business owners.
"I think there was a question about what it means for organizations like ours given that we have a diversity focus, and I can tell you from the VC firms that we work with, they've continued to double down on their support," Mak said.
