Today I looked at two post from Mike Green on the Huffingtonpost.com website. One called Missing: Black Angel Investors and the other called Venture Capitalists Aren’t Investing In Black Entrepreneurs. Both are good reads and continues to highlight the diversity problem in the web/tech entrepreneurship space.
Standing out in the in the Venture Capitalists Aren’t Investing In Black Entrepreneurs post was the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity chart. In the chart it shows that for 2010 the Black demographic entered entrepreneurship at a rate of .24% and comprised 9% of the total new entrepreneurship activity in the U.S. in 2010
With the data above, my question about the “Venture Capitalists Aren’t Investing In Black Entrepreneurs” post is are there enough minority entrepreneurs to be found? Especially if you look at the data where 9% is Black in new entrepreneurship vs 60% white, 23% Latino vs 6% Asian. If so how can Blacks get in front of Venture Capitalists” if that’s their goal? Why only 9% and are Blacks educating themselves about Venture funding? Another question would be out of the 9% how many did seek after venture funding and received it or were denied?
Regardless 2011 is still shaping up to be an exciting year for minority entrepreneurs if the energy and conversations continue about this topic. My suggestions for minority entrepreneurs is to work hard, stop sitting on your ideas and launch your startup. If it’s something worth value VCs will contact you and then you decide if you want the funding or not.
Good luck!
