When female founders fail publicly, some sociologists say they are evaluated more harshly than men.

Only about 11% of investing partners at venture capital firms are women, according to Harvard Kennedy School research. What’s more, only about 13% of VC dollars go to startups with a woman on the founding team. To learn more about why women are so often sidelined on both sides of the venture capital equation, click here.

In the 2010s, dozens of female founders were celebrated on the covers of business magazines like Inc. for their recent startup success, from Emily Weiss’s Glossier makeup brand to Steph Korey’s Away luggage company. But many of these companies were also the subject of large takedown articles around the year 2020.

Sheryl Sandberg left her top executive position at Facebook around the same time that other girlboss-era founders stepped down from their companies or faced backlash about how they treated their employees. An article explores the part Sandberg played in the girlboss movement, and why her Facebook exit was significant.

Angel investor Alicia Syrett details the top reasons investors turn down entrepreneurs. For example, the entrepreneur didn’t do their homework by, for instance, not researching the investor.

While the Pulitzers have never been segregated by gender, a 2012 study by the University of Missouri found female winners required significantly more elite credentials—Ivy League degrees, experience at top newspapers, and the like—than their male counterparts. Similar credentials are also overrepresented in the category of international reporting, suggesting the award favors those with more privileged upbringings.

With Peter Thiel's "Monopoly Theory," the Founders Fund partner argued that investing in companies that create new categories, rather than those that compete with other businesses in existing ones, is a best practice in venture capital.

Not all startup founders are created equal. This data visualization of the universities that produce the most startup founders is based on the number of alumni who have raised venture capital funding for their companies. That means these alums had to do much more than put "entrepreneur" in their LinkedIn bio to be considered startup founders.

Plenty of private companies fail once they try to go public. Failing can mean shares sell for less than their initial asking price on its IPO date, or it can look like a company pulling out of the IPO process at the last minute. Some companies with failed IPOs include Pets.com, Etsy, and Robinhood. Learn more about these companies and others here.

A 2024 Women’s Sports Foundation report showed 69% of women who played sports held leadership roles. Similarly, a 2015 study showed 94% of women in C-suite roles had been involved with athletics.

That's according to a new study from Wharton. Y-Combinator, perhaps the most famous startup accelerator, currently has 16 alumni companies trading on the public market. But not every entrepreneur who joins a startup accelerator makes it big.

Sandberg joined Facebook as the chief operating officer in 2008, after previously serving as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers' chief of staff under the Clinton Administration and the vice president of global sales and operations at Google. She built a personal brand for herself as a feminist business leader through becoming Facebook's first female board leader in 2012 and her 2013 book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."

Sheryl Sandberg, a top executive at Facebook, published "Lean In," her career-advice book for women, in 2013. The book would go on to spend more than a year on The New York Times Best Sellers list and contribute to a cultural movement.

Sophia Amoruso’s memoir, “#Girlboss,” spawned more than just a cultural movement—it also inspired an ill-fated television show that is remembered as one of Netflix’s first major failures.

Many of the philosophies that the leaders of Y Combinator have infused into the program’s portfolio companies have become the playbook for building the next big thing, such as its focus on founder personality and more.

However, only two of those 10 women were in charge of a revenue-generating business arm. Learn more about what it’s like to be a woman in investment banking—and about Goldman’s recent gender discrimination settlement.

Eighty-five percent of those women were white. A data visualization breaks down what the face of corporate America looks like, plus provides information about the history of female CEOs on the Fortune 500 list.

Health conditions that affect women more than men get less research funding. This interactive collection of graphs details the gendered gap in health research funding. Of the conditions that affect one sex more than another, those that create the...

A reporter dove into how highly anticipated IPOs can still be risky, and why retail investors should be wary of investing right away.

Stanford’s archive of lectures about creating a startup includes advice from Y Combinator notables such as former YC president and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and YC Cofounder Paul Graham.

According to a Barron’s article, only about 1.3% of the $69T asset management business is managed by firms led by women or minorities—even if their performance is comparable to those led by white men.

When an angel investor funds a company in exchange for equity, startups issue new shares to them, rather than giving them existing shares, and boost the company’s valuation.

The HBO show "Silicon Valley" follows the story of an engineer who is trying to get his startup to take off in Silicon Valley. While one tech CEO said the show is like a documentary, many speculate the show is based on real life tech figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.

Investigative journalists have written that social platform X's open, sometimes chaotic workplace stopped when control shifted irreversibly from Jack Dorsey to Elon Musk. They claim the stark contrast in personalities left little protection for existing employees, culture, or users.

In 2024, Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham wrote a viral manifesto of sorts about a strategy he calls "founder mode." It's the opposite of what Graham calls "manager mode," which allows founders to hire executives who he says ultimately run the company into the ground.

Those programs, such as Y Combinator and Techstars, not only offer expert advice to founders, but also seed funding in exchange for equity. The goal is to help young startups learn from successful companies, making it more likely they attract venture capital.

In 1908, Harvard launched the first modern MBA—and only admitted male candidates. The first full-year traditional female MBA students wouldn’t enroll at Harvard until 1963. Learn more about the history of the first women to receive their MBAs on Harvard’s website.

Founding a company comes with more than just logistical challenges—it's a daunting emotional task, too. In this article, a psychologist breaks down how first-time founders can prepare for the mental pressure of starting a company.

They also differ from small businesses in that startups have a higher level of risk, may take on outside funding from venture capital firms to boost growth, and more.

Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and others are getting into politics. From Musk’s role in President Trump’s second term to Hoffman’s spending on former Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign, more tech CEOs are expanding into politics. This podcast episode by WBUR and American Public Media discusses what the impact could be with so many tech figures engaging in American politics. Listen here.

In a video, a podcaster interviews an expert on the girlboss movement and a separate expert on “white feminism” in an attempt to understand how these two ideas intersect and overlap. It also includes a definition of white feminism and an explanation of how it differs from other types of feminist thought.

While one might assume that older women face the most unfair treatment due to age in the workplace, some research from McKinsey & Co. suggests otherwise. The consulting firm found that while ageism impacts older women and men at similar rates, women in their 20s and 30s report much higher instances of ageism than both older women and their young, male colleagues. Learn more from the research here.