Women-led startups in Google's #40Forward network have raised $20M USD this year

In March, Google for Entrepreneurs launched a campaign called #40Forward, to provide program assistance and $1 million USD in aggregate funding to organizations that are working to increase the representation of women entrepreneurs in their startup communities.

Women have been shown to successfully run companies on two-thirds the funds of their male counterparts. Women-led tech companies generally achieve 35% higher return on investment, and, when these companies are venture-backed, they bring in 12% more revenue than male-owned tech companies. Despite all this, women receive only about 4% of venture capital.

In the first six months of the program, the 40 startup-focused organizations, including five in the MENA – StartupWeekend, StartupGrind, Wamda+MIT Media Lab Workshop Abu Dhabi, Gaza Sky Geeks, and AstroLabs – have achieved some significant milestones. Since March:

The percentage of women participants increased from less than 30% to over 38%
10,790 women participated in a #40Forward program
25 new programs have been created, and seven have been scaled
$20,462,100 USD has been raised by women-led startups in the #40Forward network from January to June of this year

While Gaza’s nascent tech sector “actually has a high representation of women; it’s been quite normal for our Startup Weekends to have 33% women,” Iliana Montauk, the director of #40Forward affiliated program Gaza Sky Geeks, still took the #40Forward challenge as an opportunity to help “create more [Gazan] women startup founders.”

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Women-led startups in Google’s #40Forward network have raised $20M USD this year