Swedish female entrepreneurs’ perception of their financing experience

Sammanfattning: Entrepreneurship and the Swedish start-up community have been on an upswing in recent years. There are more incubators and accelerators for growing businesses than ever before. With a growing start-up community there is usually risk capital and finance solutions behind these companies. The climate for risk capital and other financial solutions for ventures to fund their businesses is heavily skewed towards male entrepreneurs, i.e., companies founded by men tend to receive the lion share of the capital invested, which leaves women-led ventures underinvested. The experiences female entrepreneurs have in acquiring financial capital and the effects these encounters have on their entrepreneurial endeavours is something this study aims to investigate. Studies have been made on investor behaviour towards female entrepreneurs. These studies argue that the behaviours from investors are different in nature depending on the gender of the entrepreneur, and that this can be a possible explanation for why the risk capital allocation is skewed. In order to research this in further detail, a qualitative research study was developed where Swedish female entrepreneurs were interviewed. The entrepreneurs in the study were asked to explain in a general way their experiences dealing with investors, if they have ever experienced discriminatory behaviour from investors, and if this had any effects on their entrepreneurial ambitions. The majority of entrepreneurs in the study had not succumbed to discriminatory behaviour from investors. There was, however, a perception that female investors understood the entrepreneurs' businesses in a more prominent way than male investors. The entrepreneurs that had experienced discrimination during the investor meetings all consequently made sure to be accompanied by male partners in a chaperon manner, in order to validate their presence in the investor meeting room.