Today, we are thrilled to join the consortium of VCs — including Creandum, Daphni, Enern, K Fund, Mangrove Capital, Notion Capital, Seedcamp, Santander Innoventures, and WSGR — supporting Included VC, a global initiative working to realize greater diversity in the venture capital ecosystem.
Included VC is on a mission to change the face of the VC industry, maximizing fund success by transforming networks, staff, dealflow, and investments.Over the past several weeks, I’ve connected with Notion’s Chief Platform Officer Stephen Millard, a co-founder of Included VC, to learn more about the fellowship. The passion that he and co-founder Nikita Thakrar have for building a more inclusive VC ecosystem is inspiring and critical as the issue of VC homogeneity remains entrenched. For example, Quartz reported that over 80% of venture capitalists in the US are men, and 70% are white. A study by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC demonstrated the downstream selection bias effects of this representation as well: VCs give most of their money to white men. A habit of pattern matching guarantees only one thing: a slower pace of innovation with fewer perspectives considered.