Venture Capital has a Language problem
Written by Travis Kellerman
The wave of calls for inclusion and change has begun to rise from the moat over the high castle walls of venture capital.
In the current state, one-percent, that’s 1%, of venture-backed companies have a black founder. 81% of VC funds don’t even have a single black investor. Not one. Last year, only 2.7% of all VC funding went to women of any color. Not twenty-seven percent, two and seven tenths of one percent.
And black women? 0.2% Yes. Let me repeat that: Two-tenths of one percent of all VC funding went to black women.
In 2018, I listened to an all-white VC panel deny the facts. I was playing MC for the event. A softball question came in from Twitter, something on how they enabled diversity in their deal flow. The only woman on the panel noted the vast inequity. The young-ish guy next to her acknowledged there was a problem and abstained from any solution. The rest answered with a unified racism. They each took the mic – stoic, straight-faced and tight-lipped – and declared some version of “We don’t see color.” It was like watching tobacco executives in the ’90s tell us it wasn’t addictive.
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