Open Access

Jessica Fernsler

• Relevance: Political and private initiatives call for more female founders in start-ups as well as entrepreneurship but with regard to academic research not many studies focused yet on interdisciplinary studies on especially female start-up founders. There is more need to understand the topic to further encourage female founders. Research question: The research question of this thesis is analysing what kind of patterns can be seen in the entrepreneurial, sociocultural and psychological profile of female founders compared in start-up ecosystems of three different countries, namely Germany, France and Israel? Approach: I conducted 21 interviews, seven for each city, with a semi-structured guideline focusing on the entrepreneurial, sociocultural and psychological profile. The interviews were transcribed and afterwards analysed by combining the different profiles to find possible patterns. In a final step the observations from each country were compared to one another. Findings: There are several possible patterns for each country evident. However, a cross-cultural comparison was made difficult by the heterogeneous groups of respondents. It was nevertheless possible to conclude on four crosscultural hypotheses: 1) Female entrepreneurs prefer to work first before starting their own business; 2) The female entrepreneurial profile is risk-taking, purpose-driven, innovative and autonomous; 3) Immigration has a positive effect on the intention to start a business; 4) The majority of female entrepreneurs have a higher education and come from a middle to upper social class.