At this very moment, women across the United States are sitting on million-dollar ideas, like a product that fills a niche or a service that solves a unique challenge. And increasingly, women are turning those ideas into entrepreneurship opportunities. Women accounted for 49% of business startups in 2021, a 28% jump from two years earlier.
Despite that significant growth, research shows that women are more likely to struggle to fund their projects. All-female startup teams received just 1.9% of the $238 billion in venture capital funds given to new businesses in 2022, a half-percentage point drop from 2021. The presence of one or more men on the team improved their chances –mixed-gender teams secured about 17% of VC funds last year.
As a high school entrepreneurship teacher and a woman with a background in business, I often consider how this impacts all of my students, but particularly girls and young women. In 2021, Farmington High School became the first in Missouri to offer Uncharted Learning’s INCubatoredu entrepreneurship course, which gives teams of students a chance to create and launch their own businesses. My first INCubatoredu class included an all-female team, HonorRollEDU, a tutoring service...
