Six Months Later

In early June, I wrote this post explaining that I and we need to do more to reduce the inequality issues for Black people in tech, venture capital, and startups.

I think MLK day is a good time to talk about what has happened since that post.

We have identified a number of areas where we must do better:

• Increase the number of Black founders we back
• Increase the number of Black team members at USV
• Increase the number of Black VCs we work with and support
• Increase the number of Black board members in our portfolio
• Increase the number of Black leaders in our portfolio
• Increase the number of Black employees in our portfolio
• Increase the number of Black engineers in our portfolio
• Increase the number of Black investors in our funds
• Increase the number of Black college graduates going into tech, venture capital, and startups
• Create pathways for Black students to study STEM and find their way into careers in tech, venture capital, and startups

We have ongoing projects, workstreams, investments, and efforts in each and every one of these areas and we have made tangible progress in almost all of them.

I believe that the inequity issues are so severe and deeply rooted that it will take a concerted effort over a number of years to truly erase them.

But we are making progress and if we keep at it, across many dimensions, we can get where we need to go. Roughly 15% of Americans are Black. Until we can look around the room and see at least one Black person for every six in the meeting, we haven’t done enough. Today is a good day to remind ourselves of that and recommit to the work that needs to happen.