Ireland first in Europe for number of funding rounds per capita by women-founded start-ups

Slow progress is being made despite investment slowdown, finds TechIreland

Trade

Image: Shutterstock

8 March 2024

Ireland is first in Europe for the number of funding rounds per capita by female-founded start-ups according to a new report from TechIreland. However, total investment in women-founded start-ups still lags behind countries like the UK, Germany and France, according to a report by TechIreland.

The report also showed that a record number of Irish women-founded start-ups fundraised last year – 77, up from 72 in 2022. However, the total amount raised dropped to €93 million, down from a record €234 million raised the previous year. This can be attributable to the global slowdown in start-up funding, and headwinds Irish tech companies are facing.

Of the companies that fundraised, 35 were based outside Dublin.

However, there’s reason to be optimistic about female founded start-ups. The numbers for early stage rounds including pre-seed, seed and Series A have held up and the average deal sizes in these early rounds has increased. Early stage support by Enterprise Ireland, LEOs and other programmes including NDRC’s Accelerator and pre-accelerators deserve credit for nurturing a strong pipeline of new start-ups.

Chief executive of TechIreland John O’Dea said: “While it’s encouraging to see Ireland rank among the top European countries, there is a sharp drop in total funding. Global startup funding slowed last year and we are not immune to such macroeconomic headwinds, but that said, there is clearly more work to be done to support our female founders.’’

The overall drop in funding among women-founded start-ups came from a drop in the number of large rounds above €10 million. In previous years, such outliers had inflated total funding numbers whereas in 2023 there were only two such large outliers. Tipperary based Shorla Oncology raised €31 million and Dublin’s ProVerum Medical raised €15 million. As in most previous years, nearly half of all the funding raised in 2023 were made by the top two outliers. In 2022, the outliers made up 66% of the total, so 2023 totals were less skewed in that sense.

Reacting to the report Aine Mulloy of Amazon Web Services said: ‘‘We’ve seen a near 50% drop in overall start-up investment figures this year, that percentage being even higher for those companies with female founders. However, there are reasons to be optimistic. The increase from a mere two companies, with a female founder, raising €100,000-€300,000 in 2018, versus 35 companies last year, is exciting.’’

In terms of sectors, healthtech continues to top the table with 37 companies raising a total €77 million, although the total raised dropped from €166 million in 2022. Consistent with start-up funding overall, Enterprise Solutions start-ups saw a sharp fall in funding with nine start-ups raised just €2.9 million, down from €43 million by 16 the previous year. With no large outliers, fintech also saw a drop in funding from €72 million (2022) to €3.9 million (2023). In 2022, TransferMate Global Payments had raised €66 million. Most other sectors held up but from an already low baseline.

Sinead Lonergan of Enterprise Ireland said: ‘‘We are continuing to strive for an equal split of investments in male- and female-lead teams. The New Frontiers program continues to attract a high number of females on their Phase 2 programme. In 2022, 38% of the participants were women. This number is increasing year-on-year.”

TechCentral Reporters