With insights gained from Bright Data’s proprietary public web data classification tools, a new study undertaken by Susan Walsh, The Classification Guru, found that just 10% of cross-industry company founders globally listed on Crunchbase are women. That figure is significantly less than the findings of the World Bank’s research of one in three businesses being women-owned.

“Data insights empower business leaders to make the most informed decisions. With Bright Data’s public web data platform, we were able to conduct research that shows why diversity in business needs to come off the back burner and take a more prominent position, especially in small businesses,” said Walsh.

Walsh’s research found that:

• Out of approximately 8,800 active companies globally listed on Crunchbase, just under 900 of them — 10% — were founded or owned by women.
• In the same dataset, male founders received $272 billion in funding — 98% of all funding — while female founders accounted for just $5 billion.
• This gender gap among founders is evident in both the UK and the US, with the UK having a slightly smaller percentage of women founders.
• Of the 532 companies in Crunchbase listed as being UK-based, just 43 of them — 8% — have women founders or owners.
• Of the 5,379 companies listed as being in the U.S., a slightly higher percentage — 11% — are founded or owned by women.

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“Unfettered access to publicly available web data is crucial to understanding our marketplace reality, whether that involves comparing pricing or analyzing the gender gap among company founders,” said Or Lenchner, the CEO of Bright Data. “This research provides just one example of how public web data can help businesses identify and understand hidden trends, ultimately informing strategic decisions that can enhance both competitiveness and societal impact.”

About the research:

• The full dataset with publicly available data, sourced from Crunchbase, contained public details of 31,388 founders and investors of various types of organizations across the globe.
• For the purposes of this research, Walsh considered founders and owners to be the same thing.
• Some founders started multiple companies, so the data was deduplicated to 14,877.
• Walsh’s research classified gender based on an individual’s first name, excluding names that could not be determined.

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