IDC European Woman in Venture Capital

EUROPEAN WOMEN IN VC IDC #EUR148997722 © IDC 2022 66 I amreallyhappy to talkabout diversity, because the truth is that things have barely changed in the last few years. If we look at purely women- founded startups, they raised just 1% of invested capital in Europe and around 5% went to mixed-gender founding teams. In the end, it is a numbers game to some extent. Taking FemTech as an example, we naturally also need women in leading VC roles to truly understand the gender-specific issues and evaluate the solutions. This does not mean that diversity is only equal to male-female balance — we need to be mindful of all diversity whether it is based on gender, ethnicity, age or religion to name a few. At EGP, we focus on diversity in everything we do, and it is foundational in our ESG focus and investment philosophy. We believe that technology, combined with important human values, will solve many challenges of today. But coming back to diversity; we need more data and through data more action — when we identify problems, we need to fix them so that in the future, everyone has a chance to be heard and understood on the basis of their merits and innovativeness. While some VC firms are becoming much more balanced, board rooms arenot.Asemployeesandstakeholdersstart todemandthatcompanies have a greater purpose and prove impact, it is crucial leadership teams become more gender-balanced if we want to achieve real balance and reap the benefits of having diverse teams when scaling companies. PAULIINA LÄMSÄ Investment Manager at EGP  EKATERINA ALMASQUE General Partner OpenOcean