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So the paper uh we set out really to uh we noticed that there was a uh this general trend where women were getting
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less uh venture financing than men and we were trying to figure out why that was uh and if there were certain uh
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variables that would offset this negative effect. Um and so what we found was that actually women are
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disproportionately funded less than men. Um and in addition, men who are attractive get
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this extra boost uh where they're getting funded even more than unattractive men.
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I think the key takeaway is that we tend to think that entrepreneurship is a very
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merit-based type of endeavor where we're evaluating the quality of the idea or
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how disruptive it is in a market or the executability of the idea. And what we're finding is that when entrepreneurs
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pitch, uh, there are a lot of other subtle cues, there are a lot of other factors that are going into whether or
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not somebody actually gets funded or not. Um, we've had we've long had anecdotal knowledge about women getting
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funded less than men. And what we really find is that that holds. And in fact, there's a premium that men get even for
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things like being attractive, whereas women um are still not getting funded based on those factors.
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I think they all surprised us to some degree. Um, we really set out to kind of find a way to find which variables or or
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which factors would equalize the process. Were there ways that women could pitch themselves or present
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themselves such that they would be able to uh get some get the venture financing
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or or be more representative of the types of financing that's out there. Um,
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and it was surprising to us to actually find that these results were so robust and that they held under a number of
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different conditions. I think there's a lot of practical implications in terms of presentation
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and impression management. Um, I'm doing a lot of research in terms of how people
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uh maybe present themselves in these settings in order to get the valuable resources that they need. There's a lot
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of uncertainty, a lot of unknowability intrinsic in this in this setting and uh there's a lot of factors that we don't
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realize are making an impact. A lot of subtle implicit cues that are driving this process. Uh so from the
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attractiveness perspective for example um you know this is something that people can be aware of uh both from the
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investor side as well as the entrepreneur side um and realizing that it's not something that is necessarily
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representative what's happening in the firm. Um it may be that there are specific reasons for that uh and we're
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trying to disentangle exactly what's happening and the mechanism behind what
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behind the the results that we're finding. You know I think here we actually were
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very careful to do a series of studies so that we were investigating this question for a number of different ways.
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Uh we were really careful to take um an experimental design where we were uh having the same presentation and
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manipulating um one condition where it was a female voice and one condition where it was a male voice for example to
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really make sure that we were isolating that it was just purely the gender. Uh we did the same thing with
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attractiveness. Um and in a third study, we also looked in the field at real uh pitch competitions to see that the
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effect hold held in in that the effect held in a real setting. I think there's a lot of directions that
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we can go from here in terms of looking at what's actually happening and disentangling the underlying mechanism.
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Um it may be that uh there's a certain subset of investors. Uh investors tend
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to be over represented. they tend to be much more male than female. Um, and so that might be driving the effect. It
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might be that the type of businesses, the type of firms uh or startups that these women or men are starting uh might
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be influencing what's happening. Um, it might be about persuasion and the ability to influence. So, some of my
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other work uncovers this interpersonal influence uh aspect that is really important in entrepreneurial financing
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and entrepreneurial resource acquisition. Uh so there's a lot of underlying things that could be
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happening and I think it's important to kind of understand uh why it is that
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we're seeing these these effects [Music]