By Margot Lee Schmorak
Every March, we celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month as a global celebration of women’s achievements. And in the startup ecosystem, there’s a lot to celebrate — women are trailblazing and innovating at unprecedented rates.
But these celebrations are also about shining a spotlight on how far we are from gender parity. And the sad fact is that women in the startup ecosystem consistently have to do more with less — less time, less support, and less capital.
I work with trailblazing women founders every day. Not only am I a founder myself — of an industry-leading property management software company called Hostfully — but I’m also the co-founder of VC Backed Moms, an online community of over 400 venture backed founders who are also mothers. With members across the globe, our group has collectively raised more than $6B in venture capital for more than 400 companies. As a community, we offer a safe space to ask questions, collaborate on challenges, and deeply support each other. Our success doesn’t happen in isolation.
But why is being a VC-backed mom so unusual? After all, millennial women make up the majority of the college-educated workforce. Black women outpace other demographics in founding new businesses. And women-founded startups consistently outperform their peers — from revenue, to job creation, to return on investment, despite receiving less than 3 percent of total venture capital dollars in 2023.
Looking at these successes it would be easy to believe (and many do), that us women founders have all we need. But in reality, we’re succeeding in spite of policies that don’t support women in the workplace — especially on their journey through motherhood.
The unfortunate reality is that over 50% of women consider leaving the workforce due to the high cost of childcare. Meanwhile, there remains a serious lack of resources available to U.S. mothers. This means that mothers increasingly shoulder both family caregiving and breadwinner responsibilities. Yet, in the workplace, including the startup ecosystem, mothers are not on equal footing compared to their male counterparts.
If we want to make actual strides toward a more equitable playing field, we have to look at how we help women through pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond — including through government-supported benefits.
In Sweden, new mothers can take up to 69 weeks of paid leave. It’s 52 weeks in the UK and 34 weeks in Slovakia. By contrast, the U.S. is one of just a handful of countries — and the only OECD member — without paid parental leave. In many countries, the support continues through early childhood so that parents — especially women — don’t have to choose between family and career, or crumble under crushing childcare costs. In countries like Denmark, young children are guaranteed childcare placements, with parents paying just a fraction of the cost. In Germany, the average annual cost of child care is under €1,500.
Comparatively, in the U.S., the average annual cost of childcare is over $14,000, and can far exceed that depending on where you live. In leading entrepreneurial centers like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and more, parents often pay more than $24,000.
Women founders don’t have the luxury of waiting for policymakers to drive the push for equity. At VC Backed Moms we’re trying to do some of the work ourselves. We share best practices around maternity leave, pumping, breastfeeding, parental leave, childcare, and health insurance. Together, we face hard truths about what it costs to make all this happen. And we do this knowing we’re some of the privileged few who are making it through the gauntlet of raising venture capital.
Today, there are thousands of women in the U.S. who don’t get this same opportunity because of their personal, financial, or domestic situations. Great entrepreneurs know that success doesn’t just come from hard work and ingenuity. It’s also about timing and access to resources. For women, this requires support during pregnancy, childbirth, and through motherhood.
There are clear steps policymakers can take this March to support women entrepreneurs. They should immediately pass legislation to expand the child tax credit, and direct more funds to build more childcare facilities, recruit more providers, and make sure women can afford it. This is even more critical after the expiration of childcare stabilization funds. Mothers, women, entrepreneurs — we need these lifelines now.
To be clear, this is not a plea for help. This is a call to invest in our country’s future. Women have proven their abilities to build exactly the type of companies that make the U.S. the innovation center that it is — one brimming with new ideas, solid business fundamentals, and outstanding financial performance. So why aren’t we directing more policies and funding toward supporting the very people who can make this happen? We should and need to put our capital to good use. After all, an investment in childcare will fuel our economy. And an investment in women will fuel our innovation.
Margot Lee Schmorak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hostfully, an award-winning property management software provider for short-term rentals, and the co-founder of VC Backed Moms, an online community of over 400 venture backed founders who are also mothers. She resides in San Francisco with her husband Ari and three children.
Engine is a non-profit technology policy, research, and advocacy organization that bridges the gap between policymakers and startups. Engine works with government and a community of thousands of high-technology, growth-oriented startups across the nation to support the development of technology entrepreneurship through economic research, policy analysis, and advocacy on local and national issues
