Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser considers a move that would increase her power, Sam’s Club competes with Costco’s famous hot dogs, and seed funding for diverse founders overwhelmingly goes to white women. Have a terrific Tuesday.
– Seed stage. In her two years working as head of platform for BBG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in diverse founders, and working for startups before that, Amber Quiñones long suspected something: that much of the funding the venture industry puts behind diverse founders goes to white women.
Over the past several months, Quiñones dug into the data to explore her hypothesis. And the results didn’t surprise her, although they might surprise others in the industry. White women have received 79% of seed-stage funding categorized as deployed to diverse founders, according to an analysis of Crunchbase data. Quiñones and BBG Ventures shared the report, part of a broader analysis of the state of seed-stage venture funding, with Fortune exclusively.
Crunchbase’s database includes an all-time $3.17 billion in seed-stage funding for diverse founders—women and people of color—through June of this year. The database records 32,000 early-stage deals for diverse founders by active investors (not friends-and-family seed-stage backers), but the majority of those deals don’t disclose the amount of capital raised. Out of those deals, about 24,000 were for companies founded by women—and 20,000 of those were startups founded by white women.
All in all, white women received 64% of diversity investment deals by deal count and 79% by amount of capital, the analysis found. Women of color received less than 10% of diversity investment checks by deal count. The data supports longtime research that shows that Black women receive less than 1% of venture funding—and arrives as Fearless Fund is under legal attack for providing capital to Black women founders.
This research analyzed seed-stage investing because of BBG Ventures’ focus as a firm. Early-stage investing arguably produces more progress for female founders than growth-stage investing. With the latter, mega rounds for companies founded by mostly white men have shrunk the share of capital that goes to women in recent years, even as female-founded companies raise increased dollar amounts year-over-year.
Quiñones argues that the seed stage is a critical place to improve these statistics. “We can’t meaningfully change the outcomes of venture capital at the exits if we’re not meaningfully changing the inputs at the early stage,” she says.
BBG Ventures is led by managing partners Susan Lyne and Nisha Dua, and all companies it backs have at least one female founder. In its own current fund portfolio, 55% of its female founders are women of color and 45% are white women.
Ultimately, these findings lead Quiñones to worry that some of the same patterns Silicon Valley has been through with male founders are repeating in the female founder space. Are investors looking to diversify their portfolios overwhelmingly backing “Stanford-educated” white women rather than a truly diverse group of founders?
“Yes, we are able to move women forward,” Quiñones says. “But is everybody moving forward with them? Not necessarily.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Citi rezoning. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser could soon have more direct control over the corporation’s Institutional Clients Group, a department responsible for nearly three quarters of Citi’s profits last year. Fraser is considering a proposition that would divide the group into three segments, all three of which would report directly to her. Financial Times
- Influencers intimidate. Women who boast high follower counts on social media, even when the account is related to a career, have found it to be a controversial topic during first dates. Men, who could be jealous or intimidated by the attention an influencer-level following brings, are increasingly interpreting high follower counts as “red flags.” New York Times
- In it for benefits. A growing number of companies are starting to offer fertility benefits to hourly employees as a recruitment tool. The perks are prompting some professionals to pick up second jobs as baristas or cashiers. Wall Street Journal
- Price-off. Sam's Club's $1.38 hot dog and soda meal, a recently added facet of CEO Kath McLay's aggressive pricing strategy, has become a strong competitor to Costco's own coveted combo. Sales of the meal have surged so intensely, incoming Walmart International CEO McLay stated, that the Walmart-owned company saw significant profit increases. Bloomberg
- Re-election reflection. Vice President Kamala Harris is speaking out about her criticized first four years in office. "It's what it is," Harris said in a recent interview about scrutiny against her, but she maintains that she's "always been here and never went away." Politico
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Evolus, Inc. appointed Tomoko Yamagishi-Dressler as chief marketing officer.
ON MY RADAR
Where her father became a hero, Caroline Kennedy redefines diplomacy New York Times
Jenna Lyons is breaking all the unwritten rules of Real Housewives Time
Women’s soccer won the World Cup Atlantic
PARTING WORDS
"Commitment to diversity is a superpower."
—Emma Grede, entrepreneur and cofounder of Skims and Good American, on connecting her businesses and network to diversity initiatives
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