Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalist and Angels

We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship within a tightly controlled random field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and business angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with a randomly selected gender (male or female) and race (Asian or White). Female entrepreneurs received an 8% higher rate of interested replies than male entrepreneurs pitching identical projects. Asian entrepreneurs received a 6% higher rate than White entrepreneurs. Our results are not consistent with discrimination against females or Asians at the initial contact stage of the investment process. 

Reference 
Gornall, Will and Strebulaev, Ilya A., Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalists and Angels (August 2019).