In recent years, Silicon Valley has experienced significant changes, including a VC boom followed by a downturn, the impact of AI, and the fallout from the pandemic. Amidst these fluctuations, women founders continue to face unique challenges, with 55% balancing caregiving roles and entrepreneurial endeavors. This caregiving burden often leads to lower productivity and higher burnout rates among female founders, who report difficulties in maintaining previous work hours while managing family responsibilities. Despite broader social changes, venture capital funding for women remains disappointingly low at around 2% during this transformative period.
According to Pitchbook data, the share of dollars VCs give to women has hovered around the 2% mark for this entire otherwise volatile period.
Fifty-five percent of our founders are caregivers-juggling kids, aging parents, or disabled family members while building companies.
Caregiver founders were slightly less likely to work more than 60 hours per week, had higher rates of burnout, and were more likely to report sacrificing health and sleep.
Before kids I could force success with a massive amount of working hard; now it's harder to work the amount of hours I used to.
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