Founding or leading a company is hard. It’s even harder for underrepresented individuals who receive less venture investment and support than their non-minority peers.
That’s why Crunchbase launched Diversity Spotlight in June. We wanted to help close the inequity gap by making it easier to find and invest in companies founded and led by underrepresented individuals.
Adding the ability to contribute diversity data was just our first step. And now, we’re excited to share that we’ve just added a new gender tag to Diversity Spotlight.
Introducing Crunchbase’s New Gender Tags
Over the past decade, the percentage of invested dollars to female-only founded companies has stood at a mere 3 percent. Much like ethnically and racially diverse entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs and CEOs are also subject to investment inequities.
To help raise visibility for the disparity women face, we’ve added “women led” and “women founded” tags to Diversity Spotlight. We believe that this will make it easier for venture firms to close the investment gap.
Solving racial, ethnic, and gender inequities that underrepresented founders and CEOs face will take a village.
One step you can take right now to move the needle is to create a Crunchbase account and ensure your company’s profile is up-to-date by following these steps. The more up-to-date the profile, the higher chance it has to show up when investors are searching for investment opportunities.
We Can’t Change What We Don’t See
Back in June, Crunchbase committed to using our resources to help solve racial, ethnic, and gender inequities. Adding race and ethnicity data was the first step. Gender tags the next.
As we continue to develop Diversity Spotlight, we’re going to explore additional representation categories to fully capture how people identify themselves.
We know that we can’t change what we don’t see. We believe by continuing to add data to Diversity Spotlight, making it publicly available, and searchable, we’ll be able to raise the visibility for companies. As a result, more opportunities will open up for historically underrepresented founders.
If you’d like to add your company’s Diversity Spotlight data you can do so by following these steps. Or, if you’d like to begin searching for companies with diverse leadership, you can do so here.
As always, we want to hear from you. If you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at spotlight@crunchbase.com.
