Why Smart Money is Backing Female Founders
Bridgit Mendler’s leap to space-tech founder — closing a $100M Series B and securing a $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract — is pattern breaking. Venture capital runs on pattern recognition — which is exactly why female founders have been stuck at 2.3% of global VC funding for decades. But that same bias has created an unintended opportunity: the women who do break through are over-vetted, capital-efficient, and battle-tested before they ever get in the door. The data is catching up to what smart money is starting to notice.
At 33, after earning graduate degrees from Harvard and MIT, Bridgit Mendler closed a $100M Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and secured a $49.8M contract with the U.S. Space Force. Her company, Northwood Space, builds satellite infrastructure — and she built it from scratch in three years, in one of the most male-dominated corners of tech.
The Overlooked Opportunity
Women start nearly half of all new U.S. businesses, but female-only founding teams received just 2.3% of total global VC funding in 2024. Teams with at least one female founder captured only 16.4% of venture dollars.
This gap isn’t new — it’s been making headlines for decades. Despite the growing attention, change hasn’t followed suit because venture capital runs on pattern recognition. This is affinity bias: investors gravitate toward founders who remind them of themselves and past successes. Many believe that with 83% of VC decision-makers being men and 98% of venture capital having historically gone to male founding teams, the pattern reinforces itself. What gets overlooked is the entire cohort of…Read More.
