As you may have gleaned from my columns and history as a woman entrepreneur in tech, I’m a huge supporter of getting more women into the field.  Indeed, I feel that women bring a unique perspective to tech, business, investing and leadership.

For many of us in the tech field, it was disappointing to hear the comments of Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella’s when asked last week at pre-imminent women’s tech conference about his advice to women interested in advancing their careers – i.e. specifically on getting a pay raise. In an interview at “Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing” event, which you can read an account of here, he appears to suggest women should be quiet and wait until the system works… The comments, which produced immediate backlash, drew Nadella to respond on Twitter trying to clarify his position – that he had been inarticulate… And wrong.

Unfortunately, pay parity remains an enormous hurdle for women. As I addressed in my column on Labor Day, it’s the 77% rule (women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the U.S.).  And while Silicon Valley has been kinder in pay parity (when job parity exists), as other recent Silicon Valley research has pointed out, there also seems to be a 30% rule when it comes to women getting tech jobs.

Certainly, more work lies ahead to change these numbers and the mindset that encourages them.

But I also was struck recently by some encouraging findings in a comprehensive new survey on venture capital funding for women entrepreneurs by Babson College in the U.S. – which points to why there should be more women entrepreneurs.

The report found a narrowing but continuing significant gender gap in venture capital–funded businesses: Early-stage investment in companies with a woman on the executive team has tripled to 15% from 5% in the last 15 years. Despite this positive trend, 85 percent of all venture capital–funded businesses have no women on the executive team – and only 2.7% of VC-funded companies had a woman CEO.

But the report also contained this jewel: Companies with women on the executive team perform better! The study found that companies with a woman on the executive team are more likely to have higher valuations at both first and last funding (64 percent higher and 49 percent higher, respectively).

Called the Women Entrepreneurs 2014: Bridging the Gender Gap in Venture Capital, the study was conducted by Brush and fellow professors leading the Diana Project, a forward-thinking program founded in 1996 to research women-led businesses globally. The report provides the first comprehensive analysis of U.S. venture capital investments in women entrepreneurs in 15 years.

The study analyzed 6,793 unique companies in the United States that received venture capital funding between 2011 and 2013. You can read the executive summary here. The report findings and recommendations were shared on September 30 at an event presented by Babson’s Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership in partnership with the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women Program.

Babson professor Brush noted in the report, “Only a small portion of early-stage investment is going to women entrepreneurs, yet our data suggest that venture capital–funded businesses with women on the executive team perform better on multiple dimensions. The venture capital community, therefore, may be missing good investment opportunities by not investing in women entrepreneurs.”

However, another key finding of the report, and one less encouraging, was that the number of women decision-makers in the VC community has dropped since 1999 – from 10% to 6%.

Among the Babson report’s recommendations to change the paradigm: Showcase the success of growth-oriented, venture-funded women entrepreneurs. I agree. There certainly have been a number of successful women VCs and angel investors in the past 15 years. Long-time angel investor Esther Dyson and VC partners Heidi Roizen of Draper Fisher, Jurvetson and Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad, and more recently Margit Wennemachers of Andreessen Horowitz, are a few that come to mind.

I think the opportunities are there for women, but that there can certainly be more, a fact borne out by this study. Perhaps the silver lining is that companies and VCs not motivated by a sense of equal play will be inclined to inclusion by a mercenary motive – from a closer scrutiny at the women leaders’ financial performance.

There is a huge opportunity here for people who can think outside the common dichotomy of man/CEO; man/VC; woman/somewhere else. I just look at this and think what we are missing by not navigating outside of an outdated business paradigm!

 

On another note: I’m extremely proud to be a judge for The Pitch 2014, the small business competition in the UK. AVG is a lead sponsor and mentor for the event that concludes next week in Bristol on Oct. 23.