Founderland Launches "Rise and Thrive," the First Intersectional, Qualitative Report on Women of Colour Entrepreneurs in Europe
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Founderland Launches "Rise and Thrive," the First Intersectional, Qualitative Report on Women of Colour Entrepreneurs in Europe
In Europe, less than 0.5% of VC funding has gone to Women of Colour-led ventures.
Founderland’s newly published “Rise and Thrive” report on the state of Women of Coulor-led startups in Europe, and more specifically, in Berlin - one of the main tech hubs on the continent - sheds light on what’s behind this shockingly low percentage and how investors can do to offer Women of Colour equal opportunities and access to funding.
Access the report here.
Read our deep-dive interview with Alina Bassi, Deborah Choi, and Stephanie von Behr, the founders and managing directors of Founderland about their mission and the findings of the report:
What are the mission and main goals of Founderland?
Founderland: The fact of the matter is that <0.5% of venture capital goes to WoC founders. We are on a mission to change that. Founderland sets a new, inclusive, intersectional standard for entrepreneurs. We support women founders based in Europe who have faced obstacles tied to their ethnicity/race in their startup journeys. We bring founders, allies, and investors together to get more diverse, sustainable, and scalable businesses funded.
How do you support Women of Colour (WoC)?
Founderland: We support WoC in numerous ways. Our core pillars center around community, fundraising, and education. In September 2022, we launched Compass, our inaugural investor-readiness bootcamp. We will open applications for Compass 2023 in March. Our Beacon Investor Collective was recently launched with VCs committed to leveling the playing field for underrepresented founders. Omers Ventures, Ananda Impact Ventures, and Distill Ventures are the first movers for Founderland’s Beacon Investor Collective.
Who are Founderland’s most notable partners?
Founderland: R/GA, Google.org, Techstars Foundation, Launch with GS, and of course, the VCs in the Beacon Investor Collective.
You’ve recently published “Rise and Thrive,” the first intersectional, qualitative report on Women of Colour entrepreneurs in Europe. What are the main findings?
Founderland: It’s important to consider both the content and the context of our report. In Q4 2022, we saw the annual publishing of both McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace and Atomico’s State of European Tech. Both are very interesting reports that are worth reading. To summarise, via the McKinsey report, we see that talented women are leaving the traditional workplace, often due to challenges with glass cliffs, ceilings, and floors. From the Atomico report, we see gender and race considered in great detail when it comes to venture funding but absolutely nothing in the context of intersectionality or other layers of underrepresentation and barriers that we see (e.g., migration background, age, parental status, socio-economic background, etc.).
Our report is the first of its kind to hone in on the intersection of gender and race in one of Europe’s leading hubs for entrepreneurship. Here are just a few of our findings in the report:
- Women of colour are often drawn to entrepreneurship from a place of necessity. Discrimination and barriers in traditional workplaces motivate many women of colour to become entrepreneurs: pressure creates diamonds.
- Although less than 0.5% of VC funding has gone to women of colour-led ventures in Europe, 60% of VCs believe women and minority-owned ventures have received “about the right amount of capital”. Overcoming bias from the capital allocators is a large feat but a necessary one to unlock more funding flows to women of colour and other underrepresented groups. One of the more promising things we’re seeing in the ecosystem is the rise of new “diversity” funds, often started by individuals representing the communities they seek to support and accelerate with capital. The biggest fund currently supporting underrepresented founders is Backstage Capital, founded by Arlan Hamilton.
What are the reasons behind this meager percentage?
Founderland: 84% of capital allocators in the venture space are white and male. In turn, these VCs tend to fund founders that look like them from a gender, race, network, and socioeconomic perspective. Due to the requirement of warm introductions, VCs are likely to miss the ‘outliers’ or ‘out of network’ entrepreneurs with whom they have no connection. There is diversity in the founder ecosystem, but we need more diversity on the other side of the table, at both associate and partner level. As mentioned, we’re most excited by the rise of new funds with clear allocation to diverse teams.
What do you recommend investors do to offer Women of Colour equal opportunities and access to funding?
Founderland: It’s hard to overcome our biases. But it’s much easier to hire diverse teams. Funds can not only draw in more diverse deals in their pipeline, but they can also achieve greater returns for their LPs (source: https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend) by diversifying the profiles of their partners, analysts, and scouts.
What are Founderland's most exciting plans in 2023?
Founderland: We launched our inaugural investment readiness accelerator, Compass, last year. We’ll be doing it again this year, so stay tuned for application calls for our second cohort. Beyond that, we’re continuously building our partnerships and ecosystems with a focus on how we can get more capital allocated to women of colour.
How can everyone support Founderland's mission?
Founderland: Spread the word! The founder journey can be lonely. Let that woman of colour founder know she’s got a community at Founderland, really from day 1 of her journey. Join our community at founderland.org/join-community.