Funding to Black & Latinx Founders

Historically, funding for Black and Latinx founders has paled in comparison to nonminority groups. But how much of a gap is there, and what opportunities lie ahead to level the playing field?

To gain insight into the state of funding for Black and Latinx founders, we analyzed race and ethnicity data obtained through our Diversity Spotlight initiative. This report utilized data provided by our Diversity Spotlight partners, venture partners, our community network, and news sources.

To date, there has been no single source for measuring progress on funding to underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. We believe that initiatives like Diversity Spotlight, our new centralized dataset of companies with founders, executives, funding and exits, created in collaboration with the community and partners, is the best place to track progress over time. This is only the beginning for Diversity Spotlight and, like all data, it is not perfect.

To continue strengthening this dataset, we welcome startups and VC firms to add their companies/investments to Crunchbase and utilize Diversity Spotlight tags.

Our intention with this data (and subsequently this report) is to focus initially on the U.S. funding landscape for underrepresented founders—namely Black/African American- and Hispanic/Latinx-founded companies—in the hope that connections will be made, companies will be discovered,
and, ultimately, that checks will be written.

Through reviewing startup leadership profiles for Black and Latinx founders, it is worth noting that these communities are not homogenous, hailing from different class backgrounds and from distinct nations around the globe. In this report, we feature immigrants as well as founders whose families have been in the U.S. for more than one generation