Evidence of Slow Change

Things are changing with awareness, albeit very slowly. Hire and Wire is a movement calling for firms to increase diversity in their workforce and write checks to a more diverse group of founders in tech. Rather than yet another mentorship program or office hours that lead to yet more posts on social media, founders who are not male or white need to simply receive more funding. Over the last years, more and more initiatives have been set up to challenge the uniformity in startup finance and tech.

With All Raise in the US, Diversity VC in the UK, the international Thirty Percent Coalition and the 30% Club, Black Founders, the Female Founders Alliance, and the Latinx Startup Alliance, organizations of investors and founders alike are pushing for more representation in general partner (GP), limited partner (LP), and board roles. At the same time, we are finally seeing a small but increasing number of new funds being raised by long-overlooked GPs, mostly led by women or, as in the case of Base10, Harlem Capital, and MaC Ventures among others, by Black GPs. Concrete solutions, tools, and techniques are being proposed, such as with the Diversity VC Standard.

More and more LPs, from university endowments and pension funds to foundations and family offices, are slowly pushing for change from the top, from the investors’ position, too, as we will discuss in our interviews. There is hope.