Angels Watching Out for Women

I read a nice blog article posted on the Seattle PI website today by Alyssa Royse. It was looking at the situation of how much funding goes to women-owned start ups. According to numbers from Venture Wire, women owned businesses account for only 4.3% of venture backed companies. This is down from 7.5% in 2002. Whoa, those are small numbers - I didn't realize just how small they were.
The article goes on to identify some venture capital firms in the Seattle areas that are particularly strong players in supporting women owned businesses - often these are women investors. The author asks whether the issue comes from women not starting up businesses or whether they are not getting funded. A postive data point highlighted was the number of female investors is up 23% since 2005. So let's hope this will lead to a positive cycle in business.