'There's a Lot of Diversity BS in Venture Capital': Bessemer's Elliott Robinson on Why Funding to Black-Led Companies Is So Low

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

'There's a Lot of Diversity BS in Venture Capital': Bessemer's Elliott Robinson on Why Funding to Black-Led Companies Is So Low
Image courtesy of the Upfront Summit

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In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, the corporate world was forced to reckon with its responsibility to communities of color—and one of the industries with the most soul-searching to do was venture capital.

VC firms have tried to make strides toward racial equity in recent years, but for many of the industry’s leading Black investors, the changes have been mostly symbolic. Speaking at the Upfront Summit in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, Elliott Robinson, a partner at Bay Area venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, said many VC firms opted to make surface-level changes that didn’t alter their actual, white-heavy power structures.


“There's a lot of diversity BS in venture capital—there still is,” Robinson said in a conversation with Upfront Ventures partner Kara Nortman.

Elliott Robinson at the 2022 Upfront Summit in Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the Upfront Summit

Addressing the mostly white crowd on hand at the conference, Robinson noted that “fundraising for Black [venture capital fund] managers is half of what it is for non-Black managers. So for all the [limited partners] in the room, you really do have to just ask yourself: Why is that?”

Robinson is a board member at nonprofit group Blck VC, which is working to double the percentage of Black investors and venture capital partners by 2024. Yet Blck VC’s targets in reaching those goals are still a relatively thin slice of the overall industry: only 6% and 4%, respectively (up from 3% and 2% currently).

Robinson said that in order to have more Black startup founders—who still struggle for a disproportionately low percentage of venture capital funds—it’s critical that those founders can find support among VCs who represent their same cultural interests. Yet Black partners on VC funds remain rare, while it’s even rarer for a Black person to be a limited partner investing in a VC fund.

“A decade ago, a lot of funds decided to change everyone's title to partner so they could [say], ‘Look at all these women partners and [people of color] they have’—but there's no economics, no check-writing authority,” Robinson explained. “I think there's five Black partners that can cut a check over $10 million in the country,” he added, noting that one of them was GV partner Tyson Clark, who unexpectedly passed away last year.

Robinson said that helping to change those dynamics in his chosen profession is a key barometer of “what success means for me” as a venture capitalist.

“It's being the best investor I can—such that I can have very honest conversation with LPs in the room who I admire and respect, but can also level the playing field so that my skin color or the fact that I went to Morehouse College does not impact my ability to invest in the brightest and best founders that will define the next generation of business,” he said.

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Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever
Photo by Samson Amore

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Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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