‘DRESSED FOR THE YES’
TruthWorks challenges venture capital bias on International Women’s Day
Female founders parody the ‘unicorn funding’ photo to spotlight the 2% reality
“The costume is satire. But the bias is real.”
For IWD 2026, the founders of HR-tech platform TruthWorks have recreated one of tech’s most recognisable images: the start-up funding announcement photo.
You know the one. Founders in black T-shirts. Confident poses. A carefully casual backdrop. And its ‘Amsterdam unicorn’ counterpart on the canals in shirts and jeans.
TruthWork’s version is called Dressed for the Yes – a tongue-in-cheek protest highlighting a stubborn reality: all-female founding teams receive just 2% of global venture capital funding. Despite widespread awareness of this issue, the number has barely moved in more than a decade.
In the UK it sits at 2.1%. For minority women founders, it drops to just 0.02%.
In the Netherlands, the government has pledged that female founders will receive equal funding by 2030. Yet recent data shows that while the number of women starting companies is rising, the amount of funding they receive is actually falling.
The founders of TruthWorks decided to respond with satire
In response, founders Emily Firth and Rhiannon Stroud and their Director of Product, Sophie Drummond have recreated the now familiar tech start-up images, copying the pose, posture and wardrobe seen in countless funding announcements.
Launched across LinkedIn and social media, the images deliberately parody the aesthetic of male-led start-up success stories.
“We wanted to raise awareness that the same people - and to be clear that’s mainly men of a certain race and certain profile - continue to get funded, while year on year women get left behind. Despite the evidence of how successful female founded businesses are. Search ‘unicorn tech funding announcement’ and the images all look the same,” says Emily Firth, co-founder of TruthWorks. “Clearly there is a pattern. So we decided to recreate what we saw.”
“If this is what a “fundable” founding team looks like, consider your boxes ticked.” says Rhiannon Stroud, co-founder of TruthWorks. “We’ve been told for years that if women want funding, we need to adapt. Be more confident. More “founder-like”. More like the guys in the black t-shirts or the crisp blue shirts by the canal. So we studied the pattern and copied it. Same poses. Same wardrobe. Same confidence. The only thing we didn’t copy is the performance. Because women-led businesses already outperform, yet all-female founding teams still receive just 2% of global VC funding. If we match your template and you’re still not investing, the problem isn’t how women show up. It’s how you decide who’s worth a yes.”
The stunt highlights what many founders privately acknowledge: venture capital often runs on pattern recognition.
“Every time another start-up announces funding, it looks like the same group of guys,” says Stroud. “That is the bias we wanted to confront. The costume is satire, but the bias is real.”
Jessie Schofer, founder of STAKKD, an HR tech database and vocal advocate of women in tech adds: “Most HR tech is founded by men and funded by men. That has to change. Companies like TruthWorks are proving that it already is. The next wave of tech founders will not all look the same as the last.”
The campaign also responds to this year’s International Women’s Day theme, “Give to Gain.”
“Women have been giving for decades,” says Firth. “We’ve delivered returns. We’ve delivered resilience. If ‘Give to Gain’ worked, the funding gap wouldn’t still be 2%. The question isn’t what women need to give. It’s what investors and the system to access investment needs to change.”
“Women are always told the problem is with their approach or how they come across to investors,” says Stroud. “So we decided to reassure them with our powerful poses, backed up with the performance to match the confidence. Ready to invest in us now?”
TruthWorks is a tech-enabled marketplace connecting organisations directly with vetted People and Culture experts.
“TruthWorks was built to speak truth to power, in pursuit of better outcomes - and venture capital is power,” Firth adds. “Let’s change the face of who gets funded, together.”
TruthWorks is currently entering its next phase of funding and scaling internationally, confronting the very system it must navigate to grow. For International Women’s Day, the company is inviting other founders, especially male advocates, and progressive VC leaders to highlight the funding gap - and to ask investors, publicly:
To help change the face of who gets funded.
Because the truth is simple.
Women shouldn’t have to change. The system must.
More information about TruthWorks
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