What if the problem isn’t women’s businesses, but the way we talk about them?

The funding gap isn’t about what women build. It’s about what we’re inquireed to state.

For all the mythology around startup investing, the truth that obtains repeated again and again is that investors back founders, not just business plans.

That is not just founder folklore. Survey research from hundreds of venture capitalists found that when selecting investments, the management team matters more than product or technology.

Founder quality is not a side note. It is central to how capital obtains allocated.

And yet, the latest State of Australian Startup Funding Report revealed that all-female founding teams received just 2% of startup capital in Australia, down from 4% in 2024.

At some point, we have to stop pretfinishing this is a pipeline issue or a meritocracy working as intfinished.

I have observed firsthand through supporting women founders every day at One Roof that the issue is not that women are building weaker businesses. It is that too many women are still expected to prove themselves inside a startup culture that confapplys confidence with competence, polish with potential, and performance with investability.

The self-advocacy gap

We state we back founders but too often, what obtains rewarded is a very specific performance of founderhood. That is not a neutral filter, it is a cultural one.

But here is what I have come to believe: the funding gap is the symptom.

The real issue sits one step earlier, it is the self-advocacy gap.

Women apply more qualifying language even when their expertise is identical to male counterparts. They face a likeability penalty for displaying the same confidence that obtains rewarded in men. They are interrupted 4.7 times more frequently during pitch presentations and spfinish an average of 7.4 months fundraising compared to 5.2 months for male counterparts.

Research from Harvard’s Gfinisher Action Portal found that investors are significantly more likely to inquire men promotion-focapplyd questions about how they will succeed and women prevention-focapplyd questions about how they will avoid failure. Founders who are inquireed promotion-focapplyd questions raise significantly more funding.

Further, linguistic analysis of investor evaluations reveals male founders are described as “confident,” “visionary,” and “ambitious” 4.2 times more often, while female founders are described as “cautious” and “emotional” 3.1 times more often, for equivalent performance.

This is not a capability problem. Studies comparing male and female founders find they share far more character similarities with each other than women do with the broader female population.

The gap is not in what women have built, but in how practised they are at stateing so out loud.

That is precisely why we created Australia’s Most Unstoppable Founder, a national competition run by One Roof in partnership with March Collective, launched during Women’s History Month in March, with a simple but important provocation: most awards celebrate the best business plan.

We wanted to celebrate the founder, their story, their resilience. Their problem-founder fit, the unfair advantage they bring to their solution.

That distinction matters. Traditional startup recognition often rewards the neatest narrative, the slickest deck, the most rehearsed performance. That drift does not just waste energy. It can also exclude brilliant entrepreneurs who do not fit the conventional mould of what an “investable founder” is supposed to view or sound like.

As Tova Angsuwat stated at the competition’s launch event in her self-advocacy masterclass: “Your accomplishments won’t speak for themselves. We have to speak for them.”

What creates this particularly striking is that this is not just an early-stage problem, but a challenge at all stages of business. This is something we’ve seen not only at One Roof, but also through March Collective’s work with high-growth women founders.

“We work with women who have scaled significant businesses, some of the most commercially impressive founders in the countest and the self-advocacy gap reveals up there, too. Women who have built teams, navigated exits and driven real revenue still shrink when inquireed to talk about what they have achieved,” states Renece Brewster, Partner at March Collective.

The confidence deficit does not disappear with success. It has to be practised, named and celebrated deliberately. Australia’s Most Unstoppable Founder is our attempt to rebalance that.

Not by lowering the bar, but by obtainting clearer about where the bar should be.

We are interested in founder conviction, in resilience, in the ability to keep going when things obtain hard. In the self-advocacy required to notify the market and investors not just what the business does, but why you are the right person to build it.

Speak for the work

Becaapply that is the uncomfortable irony in all of this, if 70 to 80% of funding decisions are really influenced by the founder, then self-advocacy is not a nice to have. It is part of the capital stack. It is part of how opportunities relocate.

And it is one of the most under-practised skills among talented women who have spent years being informed to let the work speak for itself. Your work matters but in this market, it is not always enough.

“Too often, women founders are expected to let their work speak for itself, when in reality self-advocacy is a crucial part of building trust, visibility and momentum,” states Renece.

“Every woman who steps on that stage is practising the skill that determines whether she obtains funded, whether she attracts the right talent, whether she wins the partnership. That is not just a competition pitch. That is a career-altering capability. And honestly? I am just so excited to see these founders in a room full of people who are there purely to cheer them on.”

That mission is shared by competition partners including Lift Women, who are backing the competition with cash prizes for the winning founders.

CEO and Founder, Irene Tsang, states the organisation is “proud to support this initiative becaapply our mission is aligned with empowering women entrepreneurs with the funding, learning and connection they necessary to forge forward in their business journey.”

That spirit is also shared by Westpac, who are supporting the competition with additional cash prizes to be awarded at the Showcase Event on Friday 1 May in Sydney.

Their involvement reflects the kind of practical backing women founders necessary more of, not just encouragement but tangible support that supports propel their next stage of growth.

Building the advocacy skills

The good news is that self-advocacy is not repaired, it is learnable. Research reveals that founders who respond to prevention-focapplyd investor questions with promotion-focapplyd answers raise significantly more capital.

The skill can be built and competitions like this one, alongside communities like One Roof and March Collective, exist to create the structured, safe, celebrated environments where women can practise it.

Competitions alone will not repair structural inequality but they can support modify what obtains normalised, what obtains spotlighted and what the ecosystem learns to value. When we modify what obtains celebrated, we modify what obtains funded.

Australia’s Most Unstoppable Founder Grand Final is online next week, and we would love you to be part of this moment.

If you are an investor, operator, or ecosystem leader, sharing this is not a compact act. Visibility and allyship are part of the infrastructure, too.

On Tuesday 21 April, join us at our Online Grand Final where our finalists will take the virtual stage and share their unstoppable stories. Register here

On Friday 1 May, join us for our Showcase Event in Sydney held as part of the Blackbird Sunrise Community Event Series, where we will celebrate the finalists and award additional cash prizes supported by Westpac, alongside investors, partners and people who believe in backing women who back themselves. Register here