Female-founded start-ups raise less than half the venture capital funding of those founded by men, but generate more than twice the revenue, a major study has found.

In research that will challenge the Australian venture capital and private equity industries, where only 5 per cent of investment professionals are female and only 26 per cent of backed companies have a female founder, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) studied data on investment funding and revenue generated by 350 start-ups over five years. The founders were all alumni of MassChallenge, a US-based global network of start-up accelerators.