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Friday 03 July 2015 4:54 am

UK start-ups beat the US for diversity as founders are five times more likely to be female

By: Clara Guibourg

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The UK's tech hub may have fewer "unicorns" than its American counterpart – but at least we're doing better at one thing.

Start-up founders in the UK are five times more likely to be female compared to the US, a new study from startup accelerator Wayra shows. They’re also ten times more likely to have a minority background.

The company surveyed 222 British start-ups and found that almost one in three start-up entrepreneurs were female.
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Also, nearly 80 per cent of those surveyed considered diversity to be good for business, declaring that it “helped their business compete”.

Simon Fanshawe, from consultancy firm Astar-Fanshawe, which helped carry out the study, agreed, arguing that increasing diversity would help the UK create a dominant start-up centre.

“What this research tells us is that start-ups would get far more growth, innovation and entry into new markets if there was a more diverse combination of people involved.”

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