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Microsoft wants to give $4 million to two female-led startups

The software giant says it’s focusing on an underrepresented group.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News
Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he's always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.
Connie Guglielmo SVP, AI Edit Strategy
Connie Guglielmo is a senior vice president focused on AI edit strategy for CNET, a Red Ventures company. Previously, she was editor in chief of CNET, overseeing an award-winning team of reporters, editors and photojournalists producing original content about what's new, different and worth your attention. A veteran business-tech journalist, she's worked at MacWeek, Wired, Upside, Interactive Week, Bloomberg News and Forbes covering Apple and the big tech companies. She covets her original nail from the HP garage, a Mac the Knife mug from MacWEEK, her pre-Version 1.0 iPod, a desk chair from Next Computer and a tie-dyed BMUG T-shirt. She believes facts matter.
Expertise I've been fortunate to work my entire career in Silicon Valley, from the early days of the Mac to the boom/bust dot-com era to the current age of the internet, and interviewed notable executives including Steve Jobs. Credentials
  • Member of the board, UCLA Daily Bruin Alumni Network; advisory board, Center for Ethical Leadership in the Media
Ian Sherr
Connie Guglielmo
2 min read
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Microsoft's two-year-old venture fund, M12, is running a competition for business-focused tech and giving two winners $2 million each in funding. The catch: They must be women-led companies.

"These are companies who might not have been on our radar," Peggy Johnson, Microsoft's head of business development, said in an interview.

Microsoft said there's good reason for its focus. Companies founded solely by women represented just 2.2 percent of all venture capital funding in the US last year, according to data from industry tracker Pitchbook. Yet, research consistently shows that women-led companies tend to generate better returns

Johnson, a former Qualcomm executive who joined Microsoft in 2014, began M12 ("M" for Microsoft, 12 for the number of letters in "entrepreneur") as an effort to identify promising startups Microsoft can both invest in and support with access to its technology. Last year, the company held an artificial intelligence competition called innovate.ai, awarding $3.5 million to startups working on medical technology, privacy and speech recognition.

This time, Johnson said she wanted to tackle diversity more directly. Despite Microsoft's diversity efforts, for example, just 7.5 percent of M12's portfolio companies are founded by women. And while Johnson said that's above the industry average of about 5 percent, it's not enough.

"We need more" women in tech, she said. 

Microsoft will accept submissions for its competition from Thursday to September 30 from applicants in North America, Europe and Israel. 

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