When a young college student drummed up a creatively feline approach to headphones back in 2014, she had no idea she was about to unleash a Cat Ear Headphone revolution.  Wenqing Yan came to Indiegogo looking to raise $250,000 to bring her quirky headphones to life. $3 million and over 20,000 funders later, she was well on her way. Wenqing's phenomenal Indiegogo success soon landed her a partnership with Brookstone, and by the 2015 holiday season (just one year later) her innovation was one of the top selling items in Brookstone. When asked if they would've invested in the Cat Ear concept back before their Indiegogo success, a well-known VC responded, "no way."

Women are often shut out of traditional forms of financing. At Indiegogo, which I co-founded in 2008, we've made it our mission to level the playing field so that women can bring their entrepreneurial and creative ideas to life without being subjected to unfair judgment such as unconscious gender bias. This is why I'm so excited to join ELLE.com, Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Code (a two-time Indiegogo alum), and Jane Park of Julep Cosmetics at SXSW on Monday to talk about the state of work for women today.

The discussion comes at the perfect time, right after International Women's Day, smack in the middle of Women's History Month. And while many conversations about women in the workforce focus around the factors that hold women back, I want to focus on the opposite: The unique factors that propel women forward in today's working world. For example, their skills in crowdfunding.

Women are actually better at crowdfunding than men.

A recently released study from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business based on over 9,000 Indiegogo campaigns, recently showed that women are actually better at crowdfunding than men. The researcher found that women were more likely to express positive emotion, vividness, and inclusiveness, and less likely to use business language. Comparing these factors to success, she found that the most successful campaigns on Indiegogo used positive emotion and inclusive language and those that fell short relied on dry, business language. The researcher concluded that since women are better at expressing more positive emotion and using inclusive language than men, backers may be more likely to fund their projects.

Connecting the research to our own findings, we see consistent themes. We also have found that the more inclusively campaigners approach their campaigns, the more successful they are. Specifically, campaigns run by teams raise 240% more than campaigns run by a single person, and campaigns that do three or more updates raise on average 531% more than campaigns with two or less updates.

Further, our own data tells us there are four reasons people fund: 1) project, 2) passion, 3) participation, and 4) perk.  It's clear backers don't just fund the "what" (i.e. perk), they also fund the "why," "who," and "how." I believe this maps well to the 'positive emotion' finding of Haas' research as it's difficult to talk about the impact of your project, why you're so passionate about it, and how you're going to achieve it without being positive.

When given an open and democratic way to connect with audiences to raise money, women embrace their own unique traits—instead of trying to adopt more "masculine" ones—and they do better!

The takeaway for me is that it's incredibly encouraging to see research showing that behaviors often associated with women are the very behaviors driving success in crowdfunding on Indiegogo. 

It's impossible to tell whether these behaviors are innate ("nature"), or if they are developed as women grow up ("nurture"), and it doesn't really matter. What matters is that when given an open and democratic way to connect with audiences to raise money, women embrace their own unique traits—instead of trying to adopt more "masculine" ones—and they do better! Which is absolutely wonderful. The more authenticity in this world, the better.

Without a doubt women are worth investing in. Not because of quotas, but because our ideas are wanted and needed in the world, and we're willing to work hard to bring them to life. We see it every day on Indiegogo, and we're now seeing it go beyond crowdfunding—remember the Cat Ear headphones!

Indiegogo is dedicating this year to inspiring more women to go into entrepreneurship. If you know a woman thinking about the entrepreneurial path, please send them over. We will get them on their way!