. SEEDTABLE

December 13th | #54

This week in Europe: Diversity in European Tech

Last week, Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne resigned over criticism from within his coalition government of the handling of a postal workers’ strike.

On Tuesday, Sanna Marin was sworn into office in his place, becoming the world’s youngest prime minister. As a result, Finland’s five coalitions are led by women, all but one of them under 35.

This week, UK-based Ada Ventures, announced a 34 million fund "aimed at super-charging diverse global founders."

These two events, and the ensuing media coverage on diversity that followed, triggered today’s piece.

Why?

Here’s a “hot” take I’ve heard a million times: Europe has a diversity and inclusion problem. It’s the cool thing to say in 2019.

What I’ve never heard is a clear explanation of why the current state of European diversity is a problem and precise criteria and action steps for improvement.

Saying something is a problem, not explaining why and then doing nothing about it is not something I’m a fan of. So today I’m going to take a stab at analyzing the diversity problem in European tech.

Friendly warning: Diversity is a heated topic. I enjoy a good debate and being proven wrong so if you don’t agree, hit reply. But if you are going to get offended and stop reading halfway through, you might as well unsubscribe now.

Still here? Cool. Fasten your seatbelts.

Let’s start with the facts

Let’s get something out of the way: European tech is a male-dominated industry. There’s no way around it. The data is as clear as data can be.

It is a fact that more men fund startups than women. Not only that–startups funded by men also receive, by far, most of the available VC money. Although 2019 has, so far, been the second-best year for investment into startups with a female founder or co-founder, men still take around 76% of all VC money.

Source: 2019 State of European Tech

When it comes to high-level employees, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s report, just 56% of startups have at least one women in an executive position, and only 40% have at least one women on the board of directors. Half of startups have no women in leadership positions.

On a more general note, only 16% of software engineers are female and around 75% of the people actively working on