‘I fire people just as quickly as my male co-founders’

Successful female entrepreneurs have hit out at sexist attitudes, and male-led venture capital funds, for a failure of the industry to make a dent in a significant imbalance in funding for female-led start-ups.

Lucy Liu, co-founder and president of unicorn funds transfer start-up Airwallex, said investors often still assumed women would be gentle and in the start-up industry only because their careers had plateaued elsewhere.