Can Venture Capital Solve Its Whiteness Problem?
Jun 17 2020
Editor's note: This is the first in our series examining diversity in venture capital. Read the second and third stories here and sign up for our newsletter to get updates.
The nationwide protests in response to the killing of George Floyd led to a flurry of discussions and self-reflection in the overwhelming white male world of venture capital about what needs to change to make the industry more diverse. While many VCs were quick (or not so quick) to take to social media to say they support diversity or attend webinars on inclusivity, meaningful concrete action has been less common.
"The venture field has been probably the slowest to let minorities and women in," said Sue Toigo, co-founder of the Toigo Foundation, which helps underrepresented minorities get careers in finance. "It has the worst record of all asset classes."
<p>Just 4% of VC employees are black, according to a 2018 survey by the National Venture Capital Association, an industry trade group, which announced a new nonprofit arm this week focused on diversity. However, the true numbers are likely much lower because that survey – like all others examining diversity — is self-reported. Only 203 of the 1428 VC firms NVCA contacted even bothered to answer. A local initiative to increase diversity, <a href="https://www.pledgela.org/" target="_blank">PledgeLA</a>, has also been hampered by limited participation.<br/></p><p>Along with Softbank, Andreessen Horowitz has been the only major firm to announce a new fund in the wake of the protests that will focus on underrepresented founders. But its new <a href="https://a16z.com/2020/06/03/talent-x-opportunity/" target="_blank">Talent x Opportunity Fund</a> will start with just $2.2 million in donations from partners, a relative pittance for a firm with $14 billion under management. </p><p>"I'm worried that this is being treated as more of a charity case rather than doing the work to reform our internal process so that we don't discriminate against founders of color," said a black VC who works in L.A. She asked to remain anonymous because she was afraid speaking out could harm her future career prospects. Asked why she was afraid of using her name even after so many in the industry have spoken up in support of diversity, she said, "There are professional ramifications that may come with being known as the investor who only invests in founders of color. When you speak about diversity you're the diversity person and you're taken out of deals that don't have diverse founders, which is sad."<br/></p><p>This VC said she was happy to finally see more people "waking up" to biases in the industry and that most have good intentions but she wonders if partners are willing to do the harder things necessary to truly change how investment decisions get made. "Companies need to tie their executive compensation to these efforts if they're serious about it," she said.</p><p><a href="https://www.lumalaunch.com/about" target="_blank">Luma Launch,</a> the four-year-old investment arm of the film studio Luma Pictures, is a typical VC firm. Its three investors are all white and out of the 28 companies in its portfolio, none were founded by a black person. </p><p>"The reality is we are the problem," said Luma's lead investor, Laurent Grill. "We've obviously all contributed to this in some form or fashion whether it was passively or actively." </p><p>In 2017, as the country was roiled by the Me Too movement, Grill and his partners revamped their deal flow to ensure more female founders get funding. He says the percentage of female founders the firm sees increased from 10% to 30% and now he is determined to hold the firm accountable to invest in more people of color. </p><p>"This is not being charitable," Grill said. "We are not trying to just invest in companies to check a box, that's when things will crumble and fail. I don't have the perfect solution. We are genuinely having conversations about this."</p><p>The effort to add more female VCs after #MeToo can provide a helpful template for increasing diversity, according to Paul A. Gompers, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies the demographics of finance. He found that after 25 years of virtually no gains, over the past four years the number of female VCs hired nearly doubled, though it is still just 18%.<br/></p><p>"We have these strong biases to associate with people who are like us," Gompers said. "I think most venture capitalists aren't sexist and they're not racist but these unconscious biases affect our decisions."</p><p>Gompers has found VCs who have daughters tend to hire more female partners and their portfolio performs better. He's now turning his attention to ethnic diversity, gathering data to see if VCs who played on diverse intercollegiate athletic teams are more likely to hire people who do not look like them.</p><p>"Who you invest in looks a lot like who you are, so white men who went to Stanford and worked at Google like to invest in white men that went to Stanford and worked at Google," he said. "We know there are underserved pockets of entrepreneurs out there and those opportunities could perhaps create greater returns."</p><p>Internships are a crucial pipeline for recruiting new talent, but Toigo says VC firms can often be reluctant to bring them on, blaming fears about exposing proprietary deals to someone who might only stick around for a summer. "We have a hard time placing our interns at firms," said Toigo. </p><p>If nonwhite people do somehow make it in, they rarely advance, especially to the highest levels from principal to partners, who are usually brought in from the outside from those who can raise capital themselves or have operated their own company.</p><p>"When you don't have representation on your investment committee, it is very hard to properly assess people that come from backgrounds very different from yours," said Austin Clements, a partner at early stage venture firm OPV and the managing director at Grid110.</p><p>Just 10% of VC-backed companies in Los Angeles are run by a person of color or a woman, according to PledgeLA. </p><p>If one was trying to create a deal- making process from scratch to perpetuate whiteness, you would be hard pressed to come up with one more exclusionary than the current one where pre existing networks and who you know are paramount. Many firms require "warm introductions" before they will even consider evaluating a company. </p><p>"The same VCs who complain about 'not getting deal flow' from diverse- or females-led companies are the same people who have the 'we prefer a warm intro' line on their website," tweeted Samantha Smith, founder & CEO of <a href="https://vishion.co/" target="_blank">Vishion</a>.</p><p>Clements said he sees it all the time. "When people come and speak to South L.A. or predominantly minority communities, the common thing to say is 'to get in touch with me through a warm introduction'," he said. But many in the room think "'how can you possibly look at me and think we have any mutual friends in common.' I don't know that (investors) really have accepted that. People think if you have enough hustle you can get in touch."</p><p>Making matters more difficult, investors typically don't want to put money into startups that other VCs have not already invested in. And in the absence of the sort of financial metrics that would usually be the most important criteria for more mature companies, VCs have to weigh something far more subjective: Whether they trust a founder.</p><p>"The question is what makes people trust people?," said the VC who wished to remain anonymous. "Is it how educated they are? Is it how many friends they have in common? Their similarities? People tend to trust people that are more like them. It's easy to see how certain demographics are cut out of the very beginning of deal evaluation."</p><p><em>Editor's note: This is the first in our series examining diversity in venture capital. Read <a href="https://dot.la/black-venture-capital-2646196848.html" target="_self">the second</a> and<a href="https://dot.la/calpers-venture-capital-diversity-2646204153.html" target="_self"> third stories here </a>and <a href="https://dot.la/st/newsletters" target="_self">sign up for our newsletter</a> to get updates.</em></p><p><em><em><br/></em></em></p>
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These are scary times for investors and founders. A record bull market, more than a decade of ballooning valuations, and an ever expanding roster of venture capital deals of varying stripes all came to a screeching halt this month as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world and brought the economy to a standstill.
<p>VC deal flow is not like the public markets. One can't turn on CNBC and get an instant gauge of private markets, so it is impossible to know beyond anecdotes how VC activity has been impacted. But one thing many founders want to know is who is still out there writing checks and it seems a lot of people are, at least according to a list compiled by Laurent Grill, lead investor at corporate backed early stage fund, Luma Launch.</p><p>"You had founders who are freaking out because their assumption is no one is investing." Grill said. "But investors are investing."</p><p>Last week, Grill started emailing hundreds of fellow investors to see if they were still writing checks amidst the pandemic. He was originally trying to find the next round of capital for one his own portfolio companies but decided in the spirit of generosity to broaden his search and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/laurentgrill_venturecapital-startups-funding-activity-6645827356965642241-HLHp" target="_blank">posted a query on LinkedIn</a>. It ended up going viral and Grill's inbox was quickly flooded. </p><p>"When I posted this, I didn't expect to have 500 notifications," Grill told dot.LA last week. "It's pretty overwhelming because I'm not an influencer."</p><p>He has received 275 responses so far and the vast majority say they are still doing deals. (20% asked not to be included on the public list and he also excluded angel investors.)</p><p>Grill feels the results from his query are encouraging and he wants to publicize the fact that there are still plenty of opportunities amidst the doom and gloom. He also wants to facilitate the introductions that would normally happen at conferences and in-person meetings. </p><p>However, just because most everyone <em>says </em>they are still investing does not mean it is not going be a lot harder to get capital. </p><p>He suspects deals have significantly declined, though no one wants to completely shut their doors. There are optics to consider and also the fear of overlooking the next great unicorn. "We live in an industry of FOMO, because if people aren't investing they are worried they are going to miss a deal," Grill said.</p><p>725 companies came to Grill that said they are looking for financing and he has now partnered with FounderNest to help manage introductions. Other companies who want to be included <a href="https://lumalaunch.foundernest.com/account/founder/join?invitationCode=FAST_TRACK_LUMA" target="_blank">should go here</a> and investors who want to be part of the listing <a href="https://lumalaunch.foundernest.com/account/investor/join?invitationCode=FAST_TRACK_LUMA" target="_blank">should fill out this form.</a></p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><p><br/></p></div><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe class="airtable-embed" frameborder="0" height="533" onmousewheel="" src="https://airtable.com/embed/shrML0D37gYVrURbQ?backgroundColor=yellow&viewControls=on" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;" width="100%"></iframe></div>
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How Many Investors are Still Writing Checks During Coronavirus? One VC is Trying to Find Out
Mar 18 2020
When Laurent Grill, lead investor of the Santa Monica early stage venture fund Luma Launch, started emailing hundreds of fellow investors to see if they were still writing checks amidst the coronavirus pandemic, he was originally trying to find the next round of capital for one his own portfolio companies. But on Tuesday he decided to broaden his search and posted a query on LinkedIn.
"I reached out to hundreds of funds & am compiling a list across sectors and stages to help identify active investors in a time that is a bit unknown for all of us," Grill wrote.
Within hours, the post had gone viral.
<p>"It's pretty overwhelming because I'm not an influencer," Grill told dot.LA Wednesday. "When I posted this, I didn't expect to have 500 notifications. My email box is unmanageable right now."</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6646146296082239488/" target="_blank">Grill quickly created Google forms to manage the rush of responses</a>, one for investors and another for companies seeking capital. He plans to release the list next week.</p><p>"You had founders who are freaking out because their assumption is no one is investing." Grill said. "But investors are investing."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg4NDc5Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTYxOTYzM30.R04LEVJ0lH7Vtb_jPIkmlEILfVOZAYvR9mN_4d4cSDk/img.jpg?width=980" id="6df3d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="34532330b51a5b26d4e4434346e2c2c5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Luma Launch's Laurent Grill is cautiously optimistic about the state of VC investing.
<p>Of the 150 responses he's received, only two investors have said they are not writing checks. They both wanted to see public markets stabilize before they jumped back in.</p><p>However, Grill sees the results as suspiciously positive, especially when investors insist that everything is "business as usual" amidst one of the most serious public health and economic crises of the last century.</p><p>"Something is off about that," said Grill. "I don't trust it."</p><p>He suspects deals have significantly declined, though no one wants to completely shut their doors. There are optics to consider and also the fear of overlooking the next great unicorn. "We live in an industry of FOMO, because if people aren't investing they are worried they are going to miss a deal," Grill said.</p><p><span></span>Ironically, Grill's Luma Launch, which he leads along with Matt Lydecker, is one of the firms that has paused investing. He says he wants to focus on getting their portfolio companies' house in order before deploying new capital.</p>
<p>"Our companies are dealing with how they're going to hit payroll," said Grill. "We have one company that has a case of coronavirus in it."<br/></p><p>Grill says Luma is unique because it is corporate-backed and does not have a fund it has to deploy in a given timeframe. Founders needing money should find it somewhat reassuring that most firms still need to deploy their capital, though Grill worries about what conditions will look like in six months to a year from now when firms have to fundraise from limited partners who could have taken a severe hit in a broader economic downturn.</p><p>"If LP's are hurt, we're probably going to be looking at a long time before there's liquidity for fundraising," he said.</p><p>For now, Grill is focused on connecting founders and investors in the immediate crisis who might have a harder time meeting each other with offices closed, conferences cancelled, and face-to-face meetings postponed indefinitely.</p><p>"There's no benefit for me to do this, other than to help the community," Grill said. "We need people to step up who have the ability to step up." </p>From Your Site Articles
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