Equity Clear: Building Australia’s first investor diversity data standard

Equity Clear is a national initiative formed by leading investors to bring transparency and accountability to Australia’s startup and investment ecosystem and close the gender funding gap. As at September 2025, over 80+ venture funds and family offices across Australia and New Zealand have signed up to the Equity Clear platform to self-report their funding diversity data, with 26 committed to reporting and 11 already having reporting publicly using the Equity Clear template, including Alberts.

Building on this momentum, last year Equity Clear’s lead, Noga Edelstein, spearheaded its ‘Show Us the Data’ initiative – aiming to create Australia’s first common diversity data standard – to support investors and the VC ecosystem to collect and report data in a consistent way, promoting best practice and enabling the tracking of progress.

Investors stand to unlock higher returns and lower risk from investing in diverse teams yet, according to Cut Through Ventures data, all-female founding teams received 2% of capital invested in Australian startups in 2025, down from 4% in 2024, while all-male teams captured 76%. Startups with at least one female founder attracted 24% of capital, up from 15% last year and the strongest since 2019, despite deal participation share slipping to 24% from a record 28%. The gap suggests gains were driven by a handful of large rounds, not broader participation, with early-stage progress still not translating into mega-deals¹.

Show us the Data will help fill the blind spot in the data infrastructure for equitable funding by creating transparency across the pipeline from applications to investor meetings and identify where women and diverse founding teams drop out and why.

Equity Clear lead Noga Edelstein presenting at NSW Roundtable in November.

“We launched Show Us the Data because for years, we’ve been trying to fix a problem we can’t fully see,” says Noga, noting without a shared view of what’s happening inside the pipeline, the sector has been flying blind. “We needed an industry-led way to move from good intentions to practical action – and that starts with common data, common language and common infrastructure.”

Convening the ecosystem

In November, Equity Clear launched a national series of roundtables across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth, convening 150+ representatives spanning investors, ecosystem leaders and government to co-design a common data standard. Supported by government in each state with Investment NSW as a cornerstone investor, the sessions aimed to uncover current challenges and consider what would be required to deliver long-overdue visibility into the startup funding pipeline and, ultimately, shift outcomes for women and underrepresented founders. The initiative has garnered overwhelming organic support.

“ Alberts has been a strong believer in Noga and the work she has done to champion DEI, collaborate across the ecosystem and ensure that the initiative is grounded in evidence. Without measurement, it’s very hard to drive change,” says Alberts executive director Kirsty Albert, a fifth generation family member who leads People & Culture at Alberts, including spearheading DEI initiatives.

As a founding partner of Equity Clear, Alberts is steadfast in its commitment to systems-level change that expands opportunity and strengthens Australia’s innovation economy. Alberts Associate Ananya Dave has also been seconded to support the initiative one day per week.

“This is exactly the kind of fit-for-purpose collaboration needed to build a credible evidence base, unlock opportunity for investors, improve capital flows to founders, and help shape a stronger, more equal world for all,” adds Kirsty.

Noga Edelstein (left) with Ananya Dave, Associate at Alberts and Project Coordinator for Equity Clear’s Show Us the Data roundtable series.

Global momentum

Around the world, efforts to standardise diversity data across the ecosystem is accelerating – from the UK’s Investing in Women Code, now backed by more than 290+ signatories; to the US’s SB54 (2023), which mandates reporting on portfolio demographics, and the Diversity Data Alliance spanning the US and UK, where seven not-for-profits are working to standardise investor data sets.

Samar Mcheileh, co-founder of Australia’s Scale Investors, says Equity Clear was created with the clear purpose to shift the conversation away from ‘fixing female founders’ and squarely onto investor accountability: “Our simple mantra is that what you don’t measure doesn’t change,” says Samar. “This powerful, ecosystem-led momentum is joining a global movement, demonstrating the collective action needed to fundamentally reshape the future of equitable investing.”

Funding diverse teams

“Given diverse leadership teams have a 39% chance of financial outperformance versus non-diverse teams ², the lack of investment in women-led ventures defies logic. It’s like some folks are happy to make less money? Regardless of how we’ve gotten here, it’s not okay,” shares Lacey Filipich, CEO and Co-Founder of Money School.

“With a $135 billion estimated boost to the economy through gender parity in entrepreneurship, investing in women is vital to Australia’s future prosperity,³” highlights Professor Danielle Logue, Director of the University of New South Wales’s Centre for Social Impact, who serves as a Knowledge Partner for Equity Clear.

“Across Australia, the gender investment gap is both a profound economic inefficiency and a missed opportunity. Without stronger, system-wide data infrastructure, we cannot fully understand – let alone unlock – the billions in productivity and growth that greater inclusion in entrepreneurship would generate,” adds Danielle. “Better data is the foundation for better policy, better investment, and a more productive economy.”

On the ground at the national roundtable series, leading venture capital firms Airtree Ventures, Purpose Ventures, Scale Investors and Giant Leap walked through live case studies on their diversity collection and reporting processes. While a growing number of Australian investors are tracking some form of demographic data, the absence of a standardised and transparent approach has, to date, limited the ability to make data-driven decisions on capital allocation or share insights across the ecosystem.

An engaged ecosystem turned out to KPMG’s Sydney office for the NSW roundtable in November.

A common investor data standard for diversity data

For Lacey Filipich, a shift in how investment capital is directed in Australia is long overdue: “I am absolutely thrilled to see Equity Clear’s evolution over the last two years and to now see the national series of roundtables they’ve been leading,” she says. “A common data standard so we can get to the bottom of where the pipeline is choked makes total sense.”

That vision is now being translated into action.

A national Show Us the Data forum, supported by Investment NSW, will be held in Sydney on 24 March to share the outcome of the roundtables and chart the next phase of the Show Us the Data initiative – including a report on the common data standard, targeted for Q2 2026, and set the path toward sector-wide rollout in FY2027.

“We’re finally moving from anecdote to evidence,” says Noga Edelstein, “and building something the whole sector can stand behind.”

Follow Equity Clear’s journey on their LinkedIn and Website.

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