Venture Capital plays a critical role shaping the innovation economy of today and the future.
It provides a vital source of funding for high-potential, innovative companies that can respond quickly to new opportunities created in the market, allowing them to scale up and address emerging and long-term global challenges.
However, there are large demographic groups that receive a starkly low share of venture capital investment, including women, people from Ethnic Minority groups, and those from lower socio- economic backgrounds.
This significant underinvestment in a broad, diverse community of founders represents huge untapped talent and economic growth potential. The British Business Bank has a strategic objective to harness this growth opportunity by ensuring talented entrepreneurs can access the finance they need to start and grow their businesses, regardless of who and where they are.
This significant underinvestment in a broad, diverse community of founders represents huge untapped talent and economic growth potential. The British Business Bank has a strategic objective to harness this growth opportunity by ensuring talented entrepreneurs can access the finance they need to start and grow their businesses, regardless of who and where they are.
This significant underinvestment in a broad, diverse community of founders represents huge untapped talent and economic growth potential. The British Business Bank has a strategic objective to harness this growth opportunity by ensuring talented entrepreneurs can access the finance they need to start and grow their businesses, regardless of who and where they are.
This significant underinvestment in a broad, diverse community of founders represents huge untapped talent and economic growth potential. The British Business Bank has a strategic objective to harness this growth opportunity by ensuring talented entrepreneurs can access the finance they need to start and grow their businesses, regardless of who and where they are.
This research has found three pathways for enhancing diversity in venture capital investment: promoting diversity at the top, fostering inclusion in the investment pipeline, and embracing transparency and accountability.
These pathways were derived from the experiences of firms with a clear commitment to, and success in, investing in a diverse group of entrepreneurs, and validated by other research sources. Importantly, these pathways are not mutually exclusive. Ultimately, venture capital investors need to adopt a tailored approach that works for their firm, and commit to that approach with meaningful and consistent action over a sustained period.