Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Business

VC firm launches fund to invest in black women founders

Backstage Capital of West Hollywood sees the underrepresentation of women, people of color and LGBT founders in VC deals as, what they call, “the biggest opportunity in investment.”

On Sunday, Recode reported that Backstage Capital announced this new $36 million fund that will be investing exclusively in black female founders.
READ MORE: Startups believe there is a gender bias problem
According to Fortune, $1 million at a time will go towards black female founders. Earlier this year Fortune reported on data detailing how much money all-female teams receive from VC funding.

All-women teams received just $1.9 billion of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year, according to data on the from M&A, private equity, and VC database PitchBook. That’s equal to about 2.2% of 2017’s total pot.

This is combined with the fact that, even though black women are “the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country“, the funding allocated to women of colour CEOs is abysmal — 0.2 percent. This has Backstage Capital founder Arlan Hamilton viewing her company’s investment as “good business, good sense.”

According to Recode, while Hamilton plans to make multiple investments out of the fund this year, she is still raising money and the fund has not yet closed.

ICYMI: Sophia the robot claims she wants to help not harm humans

Written By

You may also like:

World

Calling for urgent action is the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

World

Immigration is a symptom of a much deeper worldwide problem.

Business

Saudi Aramco President & CEO Amin Nasser speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas - Copyright AFP Mark FelixPointing to the still...

Business

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal infers that some workers might be falling out of the job market altogether.