A friend of mine is unnervingly good at meeting new people and getting conversations some genuinely successful people. He finds such a crazy way to connect people with each other. He's connected with people I'd genuinely never image were possible to reach from our background, and one of the things he told me when I asked him how was simply: start with people from your background. "More personal."

That one comment sent me down a pretty long rabbit hole, scrolling through LinkedIn and even the YC founder list and in looking for people who looked like me, had articles written about them, were building things and raising money I was honestly quite taken aback. Sure I can make some queries, but it was me scrolling through the YC founder list and seeing the faces of the founders that really hit me. Only around 4% of YC founders are black, something I have only just come to find out.

What the data actually says

I already knew the representation in tech was rough but it seeing it laid out in the context of YC made it stand out a bit more to me. I wish to have inspirations and I wish for other people to know that it is equally possible.

0.43%

of total U.S. business revenue comes from Black-owned employer firms. $251B out of a $59T economy.

2.2%

of the workforce at top-75 Silicon Valley firms is Black, despite making up 7.4% of the national tech labor force.

Now it is obviously impossible to tie this to a single factor, there is obviously a lot of factors that may or may not have have impacts on this that are for obvious reasons very difficult to quantify, but I do wish to make some change in this.

Anyways, I'm building VRTUE

This realization genuinely shifted something in me. I wish to aggregate all of the Black talent, because I know it is out there. Software developers, engineers, product thinkers and fund managers, its clear it exists but without the right infrastrcuture it becomes easy to fall into a cycle and fail to actually create. I personally believe the "$100 billion funding gap" isn't a metaphor, but that its what happens when brilliant people have no reliable on-ramp to capital.

VRTUE is my attempt to build that ramp. I'm looking to move 1,000 Black-led startups from idea to something genuinely successful. It is an ambitious goal but I do believe it is possible through actual purpose-built infrastructure.

As always, please do reach out of you have any thoughts, ideas or just want to chat about this.

../blog