Why Australia’s governments need to lean in and step up to back female founders

Let that sink in!

As a long time senior policy adviser, advocate and mentor to many diverse female founders, I know the Government has missed something critical – how are we going to boost female founders, who receive only 11% of all venture funding (just 7% to 100% female-founded business), while delivering more returns than male-led companies.

In fact, research repeatedly confirms that women-led startups perform better and investors earn a 35% higher return on investment (“Why Women Owned Startups are a Better Bet”, Boston Consulting Group, 2018).

When markets fail and there is a pressing need, the government is meant to step in.

There is a precedent. Launched in 2020 by the previous government, as part of the Women’s Economic Security Statements (2018 and 2020), Boosting Female Founders Initiative program’s aim “was to support more women into work by providing grants on a co-contribution basis to female owned and led startups to scale into domestic or global markets.”

The change of government at the federal level in 2022 and in NSW in 2023, saw a pause of funding and a review of several matched funding programs by the Australian and NSW governments.

These decisions stymied startups in NSW who were left with no access to matched funding for 12 months.

In 2023, former investment principal at AfterWork Ventures, Jessy Wu, raised the alarm in her LinkedIn post, detailing several programs on hold, including:

• The NSW MVP Ventures Grant which had a pool of $10million and provided up to $200k to startups was on hold as part of a Comprehensive Expenditure Review, it has recently restarted with an allocation of $3 million and reduced to grants of $25,000 to $50,000.
• Accelerating Commercialisation program which provided up to $1m in matched funding to commercialise technologies was shut down in May 2023.
• The Entrepreneur’s Programwhich provided expert advice, support, and funding for startups and small businesses was closed; all staff were let go in 2023.

While it wasn’t perfect, the Boosting Female Founders program did fund 123 female led businesses from 2020 to 2024, who received matched funding up to $400,000.

Many of these women were not able to get a loan from a financial institution or an investor.

Women working on immensely important solutions like Lee Yearsly’s Skin or Mikaelia Jade’s Indigital were able to expand their business, employ more people and work on meaningful solutions.

This year’s announcement was equally stellar, with 34 grant recipients sharing in the $11.6 million Boosting Female Founders Initiative, which supported Sarah Qian to compete in a male dominated manufacturing industry in Australia with Compassion Creamery.

How will these women with extraordinary ideas be supported to scale in the future if there are fewer opportunities for women who deliver outsized results?

We are undeserving our country when there are fewer opportunities for diverse founders to contribute to solving meaning problems.

There are surprisingly a number of initiatives that are led by women for women including zero and low interest loans and mentorship like Coralus (formerly SheEO) and Women Owned Enterprise Loan Fund (WOELF) programs like Global Sisters and Tech Ready Women.

Angel investor networks like Scale Investors and Scalare and migrant and refugee incubators and accelerators like Catalysr and Ignite.

All these initiatives are filling important gaps in mentoring, networking and funding opportunities for underserved founders.

The fact remains that while the community is investing in the gaps, there is an important role for all levels of government to help Australian businesses.

The best thing the government could do is to open up their procurement to support Australian business. They can also talk to each other – at the various levels and across agencies. The late Paul Shetler said this a decade ago and it is still the only way we can get Australian business to thrive. Think about it!

Imagine getting a fair slice of the $70 billion annual Australian government procurement budget, or the $40billion a year NSW procurement budget!

And yes there are targets to increase the expenditure on Australian SMEs but not really startups. Imagine local government working with local business and entrepreneurs to better support local communities,

In my view local and state and territory governments should focus on supporting startups with grants and opportunities to test ideas and procurement.

The federal government can leverage budgets across agencies and support scale into domestic and global markets.

Better still governments can procure on the basis of solving pain points like:

• using technology to improve the NDIS, home and community care and residential aged care;
• inviting researchers and entrepreneurs to solve problems that can improve housing affordability, financial security and support people with dementia living in the community
• investing that $17m left over from Boosting Female Founders in XPrize HealthSpan challenge for Australia led by Dr Catherine Ball– to get behind something that will improve health outcomes for the nation and have Australia in the game?

Until this happens we need to keep going and share the opportunities as they arise through the growing network of women and allies who are genuinely creating a more equitable funding landscape.

A focus on seeking greater allocation of procurement to Australian startups and business will go a long way validating and scaling Australian products.

The good part is that we are galvanising and showing up to support women outside the government.

• Anne-Marie Elias is a former senior policy adviser, mentor and UTS Fellow in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She is cofounder of PrimeLife Partners.