Hello,
Welcome to the 18 subscribers who joined overnight, and thanks to you to those who referred them.
We've reached the final segment of Cut Through Venture's 1H 2021 in Review:
Preview ✔ – missed it? read it here.
Deals ✔ – missed it? read it here.
Startups ✔ – missed it? read it here
The people in question today are investors and founders. Extreme care was taken to ensure accuracy, however, people data is tricky. So, it's entirely possible that an unintended error or two slipped through. I welcome the feedback – please report any errors here.
Todays Asks:1) Be an early Twitter Follower. 2) Share with 1 colleague.
Ok, onward...
Investors
Local investors led the charge, with 19 locally based teams announcing at least four deals in during the half.
But, international investors showed interest too, including some of the most well known global venture firms. Just short of 100 international venture investors made Aussie and NZ bets during the half. Nine made more than two investments.
36 deals were valued at over $20M, and 25 of them had at least one global investor in the mix. 51 international investors participated in the 36 deals.
Founders
Team size
Two-person founding teams raked in the most funding, followed by solo founders. 82% of startups that raised had two founders or less.
Deal sizes were flipped; founding teams with more than four founders attracted significantly higher average rounds than smaller teams. These larger teams were spread amongst fintech, B2B software, healthcare, and data-centric businesses.
Female founders
The funding gap faced by female vs. male entrepreneurs is a well-documented, global phenomenon that worsened during the pandemic. Between 4-14% of global venture dollars is estimated to have flowed to female founders in 1H21. The Aussie and NZ 1H numbers bounced around from month to month.
Here's where we landed for the half...
Great, right? 27% of funding is almost double the high-end global estimate.
Here's the issue...
The five largest funding rounds for female-founded startups accounted for 84% of the total capital raised. The remaining 42 female-led startups split $115M, or just 4.3% of total capital raised.
The average funding round for female-founded startups was less than a third of that of all-male teams. High female founder participation in accelerator programs Antler and Startmate was a major driver of the lower deal size.
Let's end this on a positive note. Here are 10 awesome diverse startups attacking interesting challenges, led by diverse founding teams.
Have a great weekend. See you in August.
– Chris
