# Annual equity report 2024 **Authors:** Kevin Dowd, Peter Walker, Ann Sun, Lucy Wang **Read time:** 14 minutes **Published date:** December 17, 2024 Using aggregated and anonymized data from tens of thousands of startups, we examine how opportunities to found companies, raise venture funding, and work at startups are distributed according to race and gender. ## Contents - [Employees](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#employees) - [Race & Ethnicity](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#race-ethnicity) - [Gender](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#gender) - [Founders](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#founders) - [Funding](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#funding) - [Methodology](https://fund-forecasting@carta.com/data/equity-report-2024/#methodology) The U.S. venture capital market is an immense engine for job creation and a crucial driver of economic growth. Each year, venture investors put many billions of dollars to work in the attempt to find and help build the next generation of great companies. That capital supports a vast ecosystem of founders, startups, and employees that extends to every corner of the country. Each year since 2018, Carta has reported on the state of equity and diversity within this venture ecosystem. Our goal: to gather, analyze, and share data on the state of startups to see where inequities exist throughout the critically important entrepreneurial ecosystem. One such place is in the realm of startup valuations. At every stage from seed to Series C, median pre-money valuations over the past two years have been higher for startups with male CEOs than for startups with women as CEOs. These are just two examples out of many. In some areas, the venture ecosystem has made clear progress toward improving diversity over the past several years. In others, however, there exists much more work to be done. ### Employees #### Race & Ethnicity So far this year, according to Carta data, about 33% of new hires come from a non-white ethnic and racial background, up from 32% in 2023. This ends a streak of three consecutive years in which the proportion of hires from non-white racial and ethnic backgrounds had declined. Over the past nine years combined, white employees have made up about 64% of all new hires on Carta. Just about 10% of all employees on Carta hired since the start of 2022 identify as East Asian. Yet these employees hold about 15% of the total equity value that’s been issued to employees over that span. The percentage of equity held is also higher than the percentage of jobs held among employees who identify as South Asian and as Middle Eastern or Arab. Across every racial and ethnic group in this study, men make up a higher percentage of all new hires than women and receive a larger portion of all issued equity. For example, white men account for 36.6% of new hires since the start of 2019, and white women account for 27.9%. #### Gender The portion of all new hires in equity-receiving roles who are women has fallen to 33% in 2024, its lowest point since 2018. The rate of new hires who were women rose steadily throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, climbing from 30% in 2016 to 37% in 2021. Still, the gender divide in hiring in 2024 isn’t too far off recent norms. Over the past three years combined, just about 35% of all new hires on Carta were women; those women received 22.5% of all new equity issued on Carta. ### Founders #### Race & Ethnicity The percentage of startup founders who come from non-white racial and ethnic backgrounds continues to rise. In 2024, the proportion of founders on Carta who are either East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic, Black or African, or Middle Eastern rose to 45.5%, the highest it’s ever been. ### Gender The percentage of all new founders on Carta who are women fell slightly in 2024, dropping from 14.5% to 14.3%. The recent peak for the prevalence of female founders came in 2020, when women comprised 15.9% of the total founder pool. Women make up a smaller portion of all founders in SaaS, fintech, energy, and hardware. But the percentage of founders who are women ticked up this year in all four industries. ### Funding Startups with women-only founding teams were responsible for just 4.1% of all pre-seed capital raised on Carta during 2024. That’s the lowest annual rate of the past five years. Overall, the percentage of all VC funding in priced rounds raised by men-only teams has been gradually declining since 2020. # Methodology The Annual Equity Report includes data from more than 870,000 U.S.-based employee stakeholders who have been issued equity via the Carta platform and over 108,000 founders. #### Sample sizes We cover analyses only where we have sufficient data. Each data point must be backed by at least 10 entities in order to be included. Throughout this report, when discussing gender we only included men and women. #### Valuing equity The value of an employee’s first equity grant is calculated by multiplying the strike price by the total number of shares in the grant the employee was initially awarded. #### Race and ethnicity Carta offers stakeholders a demographic profile page for the purposes of aggregated, anonymized equity compensation analysis.