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.”
The rumors are true. Today at USOW2018 I announced that my venture capital firm Backstage_Cap has launched a $36m fund that will invest in Black women founders $1mill at a time. Thank you to the Backstage Crew, headliners, LPs, mentors & network for making this moment possible. yT1SMQOFAR
— Arlan (@ArlanWasHere) May 5, 2018
On Sunday, Recode reported that Backstage Capital announced this new $36 million fund that will be investing exclusively in black female founders.
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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.”
I too am excited about the news of ArlanWasHere & Backstage_Cap new $36MM fund. Please don’t call it a “impact” “social” or “philanthropic” endeavor. This is about making & data shows this is the group to do it with PERIOD. vc PDXStephenG) May 7, 2018
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.
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