Finix, a payment infrastructure startup company, has made an announcement that, they hope, will level the playing field between white and Black investors.
According to TechCrunch, founder Richie Serna wanted his company’s cap table to be more diverse — in other words, he wanted to give Black and Latinx investors access to an opportunity they may not have otherwise had.
This lack of opportunity is substantiated by a recent NVCA-Deloitte Human Capital Survey, which found that 80% of investment partners at VC firms are white, and just 3% are Black and 3% are Hispanic/Latinx.
Serna said that he hopes the diverse offerings at Finix will help to bridge this gap between white and Black investors. What’s more, about 10% of all funding rounds in the future will be allocated to Black and Hispanic investors.
“This is about helping historically underrepresented groups build track records and get attribution for the work to help them start their careers and hopefully one day start their own fund,” Serna told TechCrunch. “So this is just one way that we at Finix can construct a rewrite of the story about the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley.”
Jewel Burks Solomon, a managing partner of Collab Capital and head of Google for Startups, agreed that this unique opportunity is a good one for Black and Hispanic investors.
“Access is the primary determinant of wealth creation,” Solomon said, in the press release announcement. “So creating an opportunity for access to folks who might not otherwise have it is game-changing.”
Today, Finix has about 100 employees, 50% of whom Serna says he’s never met in person due to the pandemic and remote work. The company plans to double its headcount over the next year.