Finally, information on financing and exit is limited for the earlier periods. This includes their full name, current position title, education (degree and subject studied), employment history, the university in which they studied, and gender. This information has been complemented and cross-validated with data taken from Breschi et al. ( The sample is, thus, restricted to companies for which the gender of at least one founder, co-founder, or CEO is reported. Roughly half of the start-ups in the sample have a single founder, in which case it is straightforward to categorize a start-up as “female-led” or “male-led”. Some of the start-ups in our sample have multiple founders.