Some Black startup employees and founders have sat at the periphery of those investment circles for years without even realizing it, DeVaris Brown, theBrown, who was once a product manager at Zendesk, got into angel investing after he noticed that most of his colleagues at the help-desk-software company — who largely were not Black — were putting their money into startups.
Having often been one of the only Black faces in the room among enterprise-software founders and managers, Brown is particularly interested in giving other Black founders in the field a helping hand, he said. He sources deals in part through groups devoted to Black software engineers and product managers but sometimes browses GitHub to find interesting projects, he added.
In Bennett's view, as more Black founders find success, they'll inevitably help increase the number of Black investors, thus deepening the pool of capital available to those entrepreneurs, which will lead to more Black investors, and so on. With the growing popularity of syndicates, rolling funds, and special-purpose vehicles, it's gotten easier for individuals to pool their money together to back startups. A number of organizations, including Pipeline Angels and Blck VC, have programs to educate professionals of color about angel investing.
So Patterson has sought to open up the deals she finds to other Black women. That led her to join an effort launched last year by the Latino entrepreneur Richie Serna, a cofounder and the CEO of the, to bring a more diverse set of investors into the funding rounds of fast-growing startups.
忘记等待硅谷的改变吧。以下是黑人创始人和高管如何相互投资，创造自己的网络和财富。