Germany has a funding problem. Not a general one, but a very specific one. In 2024, female-founded startups received just €43 million in venture capital, a 58% drop from €102 million in 2023. All-male founding teams, in comparison, secured €6.2 billion in the same period. That’s the gap encourageventures e.V. was built to address, and it’s doing that work right now through a growing female investor network, mentors, and startup supporters across Germany.
The numbers above are not a blip. They reflect a structural pattern in how capital flows in the German startup ecosystem. Only 4% of funded startups in Germany in 2024 had all-female founding teams, and women made up just 10.6% of all founders who secured investment that year. encourageventures directly targets this gap by connecting women-led startups with female investors who bring both capital and expertise to the table.
How It All Started:
The origin of encourageventures is concrete and traceable. In October 2020, a group of female investors including Ina Schlie, Angie Gifford, Elke Eller, Martina Pfeifer, and Stephanie Bschorr invested in Tandemploy, a German HR tech startup, through an all-female investment round. That round sparked a bigger idea: if an all-female investment round was possible, why not build an entire network around it?
Ina Schlie, a former Vice President at SAP and a multi-supervisory board member, initiated the network formation. Today, the encourageventures team includes prominent names like Ana-Cristina Grohnert, Chairwoman of the Diversity Charter, Brigitte Zypries, a former German Minister of Economics, and Tina Müller, former CEO of Douglas. These are not ceremonial affiliations. These are experienced operators and executives who bring industry contacts, sector knowledge, and deal-making experience to the startups in the network.
What The Network Offers:
encourageventures supports startups with at least one woman in the founding team. The coverage spans the pre-seed, seed, and growth phases, making it accessible to founders from their earliest stages through their expansion plans. The support structure covers four clear areas.
On the funding side, the network connects startups to several forms of financing. These include direct investments where a female investor joins as a partner, club deals where multiple investors pool capital for a larger round, investment companies that already back other startups, and VC funds focused on female-led businesses. Monthly Pitch Nights give founders visibility and a direct path to interested investors.
Mentoring sits alongside financing as an equal priority. The network’s mentors come from tech, finance, investment banking, corporate management, healthcare, HR, marketing, and software. Their support ranges from one-on-one sessions to hands-on guidance across the full lifecycle of a startup, from ideation to IPO preparation. The network also runs a Startup Academy with regular masterclasses and workshops on fundraising, sales, and business model development.
Regional Hubs and Community:
The network operates across Germany through regional hubs in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and other cities. Regular meetups at these hubs, alongside a Slack community and scheduled events, give founders access to ongoing peer exchange and practical feedback. The annual all-member event brings the wider community together in one place.
This structure matters because access to investors and mentors in the German startup ecosystem is heavily concentrated in a few cities. Regional hubs help founders outside major tech centers connect with the same quality of network and support. For founders in Germany exploring female-led startup funding or female investor networks, this geographic distribution is a practical differentiator.
The Investor Side:
encourageventures does not just recruit startups. It also actively builds the investor side of the equation. The Business Angel Academy, offered in online cohorts, trains women to become angel investors through live sessions with experienced investors, real deal flow exposure, and structured guidance on startup evaluation and due diligence. The program makes angel investing accessible to women who have the financial capacity but not yet the experience or confidence to start.
This matters for a structural reason. Research consistently shows that investors tend to back founders who resemble themselves. With women representing a small fraction of angel investors and VC decision-makers, female-founded startups face a systematic disadvantage before a single pitch deck is reviewed. By growing the pool of female investors, encourageventures works on both sides of the funding equation simultaneously.
The Broader Context:
Germany’s female founder representation in 2025 sits at 19%, which is lower than in previous years. Female founders still receive less than 3% of total VC funding across Europe. The funding gap between women-led and men-led startups in Germany currently runs at a ratio of 6 to 1, as noted at the AmCham Germany Female Founders Award in 2024. These are not abstract statistics; they represent businesses and innovations that do not reach their potential due to access constraints rather than merit.
Networks like encourageventures address the funding gap from a practical angle, by creating structured pathways to capital and knowledge that do not depend on existing connections in a historically male-dominated landscape. For founders in the German startup scene looking to connect with female investor networks or access mentorship alongside funding, encourageventures is a clearly defined entry point.
The registration process is open. Startups with at least one female founder can apply through the encourageventures website and move from registration to onboarding with a personal discussion of next steps. Investors interested in joining or accessing the Business Angel Academy can also register directly.
