My interest in venture capital (VC) began long before I ever imagined building an actual venture capital fund. In college, I opened a women’s clothing store and quickly learned that having a great idea was only part of what it took to build a business. I needed capital to grow, and finding that money wasn’t easy. That experience stayed with me. 

Years later, when I began looking more closely at who gets funded in America—and who doesn’t—I realized that the entrepreneurial challenges I had encountered were part of a much larger story. So I started digging into the numbers.

When I first started researching the racial disparities in venture capital, what I learned shocked me. Women of color make up nearly 20% of the U.S. population, yet our best estimates indicate that only 0.39% of venture capital funding is invested in women-of-color-owned businesses. These numbers weren’t just disappointing; they infuriated me. And though Black women comprise approximately 7% of the U.S. population and start more companies than any other demographic, our........

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