Championing Diversity in the Venture Capital Industry

Championing Diversity in the Venture Capital Industry

Seeking out venture capital is one of the most important activities for high growth companies. It's critical that everyone has an equal opportunity to receive such funding. There are many entrepreneurs emerging every day who have identified problems and designed innovative solutions. Still, only 3% of business investment goes towards women in the United States. This is clearly a huge gap and doesn't represent the number of deserving entrepreneurs seeking capital. Therefore, let's think about how this happened and what we can do as stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem to balance this inequality.

Smart venture capitalists can agree that their mandate is to invest based on qualifications and merit. Unfortunately, many VC firms seem to be run with a "boys club" mentality, resulting in unconscious biases and systemic inequalities. One of the main reasons is likely that they are more inclined to hire and fund people similar to them. The number don't lie; in 2018, female founders brought in just 2.2% of U.S. venture capital dollars and less than 10% of decision-makers at VC firms in the U.S. are women. Since 2009, black women have only received .06% of all venture funding, according to Digital Undivided.