Paula Reichenberg, CEO of Neur.on, is part of UBS’s Female Founder Project 2025

They say female founders get different questions. Our CEO Paula Reichenberg has different answers.

According to the Harvard Business Review, one of the many complex and mysterious reasons why women secure far less venture capital (1.8% of all venture capital in 2024) is the way questions are put to male and female founders during funding rounds.

Apparently, 67% of questions to male entrepreneurs are promotion-oriented (hopes, achievements, advancement), while 66% of questions to female entrepreneurs are prevention-oriented (safety, responsibility, potential risks).

What difference does that make? If you are not aware of these patterns, you inevitably answer in the motivational register of the question. For a woman, this can make her sound more conservative and more risk-averse, and so look like a less attractive investment opportunity.

Paula “doesn’t care” about being a woman. No more than she cares about her zodiac sign. She never complains that the world is unfair and does not waste time seeing herself as the victim of anything. She does the best she can with the cards she has been dealt.

But that means coming prepared, whether in a funding round or in any other business situation. Which is why she is grateful to UBS for including her in this year’s Female Founder programme. It is a modern approach to accelerating female founders’ success, through a holistic investor readiness programme.

She hopes this preparation will involve lots of really tricky questions.