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According to a Harvard Business Review study on increasing diversity in venture capital partnerships, the more similar the backgrounds shared by the investment partners, the lower the investment performance.
Diversity, simply put, leads to better performing teams. Diversity of perspective breeds a startup that has a better understanding of the pain points that they’re trying to solve. The more a startup ensures that its team includes both women and minorities, the more likely it is to uncover the solution to the problem it set out to solve, and the more likely it is to yield a high performance.
However, the fact remains that minority and women-owned businesses still struggle with funding when compared to their white, male, counterparts. While the investment space is working to shift this imbalance, the work is far from over and many still face an uphill battle toward equality.
Minorities and women continue to face both structural barriers and biases when it comes to career paths. These individuals are expected to fit within a certain mold and stay within that mold. For example, less than 30% of the CEOs within the US are women. Statistically, however, there are more women in the US than men at roughly 97 men to 100 women.
As Ola Gambari, COO of Hungry Fan explains:
“It’s the idea of this preconceived notion that we have a lane, and we’re supposed to stay in it and, as a minority, if I’m not running a business focused on minority problems, I shouldn’t be running that business, neglecting the fact that I share all of the other pain points of other human beings in this society.”
Instead, investors should be evaluating the business on its merits, not just the fact that it has minority founders. Again, it breaks down to recognizing that different perspectives matter and yield better results. As more investors embrace this knowledge, the more equality we’ll begin to see.
Read more: http://tencapital.group/education
Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network.TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group
