Padnos: VCs rate male founders higher in 13 of 16 success attributes
Cindy Padnos · Smart Seed Investing With Illuminate Ventures Founder and Managing Partner Cindy Padnos · May 8, 2025 · at 20:28
Cindy Padnos, founder of Illuminate Ventures, discusses findings from an empirical white paper survey of 1,000 venture capitalists and 1,000 B2B entrepreneurs regarding gender bias in venture evaluations.
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“The male and the female entrepreneurs responded to a long set of questions, almost identically. But when you ask the VCs, the question is a male or a female, what are the most important attributes first stack rank them? And then is a male or a female more likely to display those attributes? In all but three of 16 attributes, they said the males were more likely to display them.”
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