Some. Good. News.
The latest Crunchbase data shows that Black startup founders in the United States raised around $264 million out of the total $33.6 billion in venture capital allocated in Q4 2022. That’s an uptick from the $178 million — or 0.43% — the group raised in Q3.
In total, U.S. Black founders raised an estimated $2.254 billion out of the $215.9 billion in U.S. venture capital allocated last year. That’s about 1%, a slight drop from the 1.3% raised in 2021. Let’s break this down.
“When the macroeconomic environment tumbled, the investors that were preaching D&I disappeared, and their implicit bias became more apparent.” De’Havia Stewart, an investor at BLCK VC
So Black in the U.S. founders picked up around 0.79% of VC funds raised in Q4 2022. There was a fear that, during a bear market, investors would retreat to their old-school networks, and the total amount of funding Black founders received last year is practically half the amount they raised in 2021 — a record $4.340 billion (out of around $330 billion in the U.S. and $681 billion globally).
Despite the record-breaking 2021, that amount of money equates to just 1.3% of all capital raised in the U.S. alone. No matter what, it seems the actual percentage of the money raised for this cohort barely moves, even as more and more capital floods the markets.
Tye Calloway, the founder of the fintech Cooler, told TechCrunch that it’s embarrassing as a Black founder to always be associated with negative statistics, especially as one trying to fundraise.
