The VC Firms Backing Black Founders (List)
When we first posted The Black Founder List during Black History Month, the world looked very different. Coronavirus was not being mentioned much in the news in the US, nor were Black founders.
Fast forward to today, the Black Lives Matter movement has begun to affect how people see the Black experience across every industry, even tech. This movement is pushing people to go beyond short term solutions, as the country has begun a larger discussion around how to address racism and make the startup, tech, and venture capital industry more inclusive for Black professionals.
Back in 2015 Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital, stated that the VC community is “an increasingly predictable and lookalike bunch that just seems to follow each other around from one trivial idea to another.” At the core of this problem are the people stewarding the capital – these people are supposed to be the arbiters of good ideas. Yet Black founders are consistently left out of this equation.
To celebrate Juneteenth, we’ve put together an initial list of Venture Capital firms that have led investment in companies founded by Black founders. These are our early allies in tech. We used the original Black Founder List as the basis and in partnership with Crunchbase expanded our data set. We’ve kicked off this list in the hopes that the venture community will begin contributing, helping make it the comprehensive source of truth around black investment.
The vision for this database is to provide the ecosystem with data, analytics, and visualizations on leaders in the VC industry who are spearheading investments in Black founders.
This list was compiled by Fatima Dicko, James Norman (Pilotly), Mike Endale (Moxit), Sefanit Tades, and Yonas Beshawred (StackShare).
