The Importance of Investing in Black and Latino Entrepreneurs

Racial diversity in investing and startups can be just as crucial as gender diversity. Black Enterprise spoke to one woman who supports and focuses especially on black, Latino and Latina founders.

Monique Woodard, a venture partner at 500 Startups, discussed why she focuses on black and Latino/Latina communities; the unique spending power, habits and demographics of people of color; how she selects startups she thinks would be a good fit for 500 Startups and more.

blackenterprise.com - Despite the statistics, black women in the venture capital investing community are starting to be a more frequent occurrence. Additionally, they are working tenaciously to ensure that black and Latino founders get funding, but not for reasons that you may suspect.

Black Enterprise chatted with 500 Startups venture partner Monique Woodard, who explained why she decided to create a fund focusing solely on investing in black and Latino entrepreneurs in consumer categories that are seeing high growth among black and Latino consumers.

Black Enterprise: 500 Startups is one of the most respected accelerators in the world. How did you get involved with them?

Woodard: I’ve been in tech for roughly 15 years; half of that time as an entrepreneur, and the other half inside companies in product roles. I worked in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation. There, I worked on open data and municipal broadband access in communities like Chinatown and Bayview. In addition to that, I built an app called Speak Chic. I also founded Black Founders, which I started in 2011, and I am still the executive director of this program.

I was finishing up my work with the mayor’s office while thinking about my next steps, and I started talking to 500 Startups, very broadly, about doing something with them and Black Founders. I started talking about the access to capital piece that I was thinking through [due to my work with] Black Founders, and we kept having more conversations. Eventually, Dave and Christine suggested that I raise that type of fund at 500 Startups.

BE: Why had you specifically decided to focus on black and Latino founders?

Woodard: My deal flow there is very different from others. I have some of the best access to those deals that other early-stage venture capitalists don’t have.

Also, the activity is very much demographically and economically driven, according to the data. Black and Latino consumers have $2.5 trillion in consumer spending power. By the year 2044, people of color will be a majority in the U.S. Likewise, in the 18 to 34-year-old demographic, black and Latino [citizens] are outpacing their counterparts.

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Inside One Woman Investor's Plan To Get Black Female Founders Funding

Though black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States, their companies aren't being funded at the same rates as their peers--receiving only 0.2 percent of all venture funding in the past five years. Kathryn Finney set out to find out why--and to shed a light on the details. Calling black women entrepreneurs the "real unicorns of tech," #ProjectDianne was launched to show that there are viable startups founded by black women, as well as to promote the founders as part of a documentary. Finney hopes that these efforts, and the information collected through them, will help foster greater numbers of black women-led startups being funded.

Read about her efforts here and in the full article on Forbes.com.

forbes.com - Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S. They own 1.5 million businesses between them, up 322% since 1997. Their companies generate $44 billion a year.

So why is no one investing in their startups? Why have black women received only .2% of all venture funding in the past five years?

That was what Kathryn Finney set out to uncover when she launched Project Diane, a definitive study of the state of black women in tech entrepreneurship that took the better part of a year to complete.

“We knew it was bad, but no one was quantifying it,” said Finney, founder of Digital Undivided, a social enterprise that runs an accelerator program for startups led by black and Latina women. “It was just, ‘there are no black people, there are no black women.’ Anecdotally, we knew it to be true.”

 What she and her team found, after examining more than 60,000 startups: 88, total, led by black women. That’s 4% of the 2,200 women-led tech startups in the U.S.

Of these, only 11 have raised over $1 million in outside investment.

Read the rest here.

ESSENCE Network: A Startup Founder Shares How to Raise and Save Funds For Your Dreams

The CEO and "Chief Sower" of Sow, Tanya Van Court, spoke to Essence about helping young people save and invest, startup tips, and her daughter's request that led her to found Sow--which adds meaning to traditional gift-giving by allowing kids and their loved ones to "plant seeds" in three categories: saving towards future goals, sharing with those who are less fortunate, and spending on things that matter. essence.com - Tanya Van Court is part of the growing number of black women successfully launching startups in Silicon Valley and cities around the country. After realizing there was no known solution to her daughter’s birthday request to save for an investment account, she decided to put her professional experience to use and become the solution. Sow now allows young people to receive financial gifts for savings and fundraising efforts, in lieu of traditional material gifts. See how Van Court raised capital for her venture and her tips to being a successful CEO.

Name: Tanya Van Court

Age: 40s

Title: CEO, Sow

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Hometown: Oakland, CA

Twitter: @tvancourt and @isowfor

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tanyavancourt

Instagram: @isowfor

The gig: I am the founder and CEO of Sow, iSow.com. Sow solves the universal problem of inefficient gift giving to young people.  In lieu of receiving troves of “stuff” for their birthdays, holidays, and gift-giving moments, parents and kids can sow for important goals like saving and fundraising. I love to see young people getting excited about saving and their goals.

The journey: My daughter shared with me that all she wanted for her 9th birthday was money to start an investment account and a new bike. I knew that she would likely receive a slew of gifts similar to those she already received from friends and family. I realized that the traditional process of gift giving was broken and that I could do something to fix it.  Prior to Sow, I served as senior vice president of partner marketing at Discovery Education and spent more than five years at Nickelodeon. I have two degrees in Engineering from Stanford and two degrees in Parenting from my children Gabrielle and Hendrix, preparing me for this task.

Read more here.