By Debbie Gregory.

The number of women and minorities that acquires venture capital as entrepreneurs are not as good as one would hope. Only approximately 10-18% of all venture capital goes to teams that include women or people of color. Investors wrongly assume that women entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs of color, are getting enough money or too much money already. This simply is not the case.

The majority of investors are mainly white males who do not see, speak with, or seek out women and/or minority founders. They often assume when they do finally come into face-to-face contact with this group that they are an odd aberration.

Unfortunately, the response of many venture capitalist is to subject woman and minority entrepreneurs to much more scrutiny than companies seeking capital headed by white males.   This discourages other women and minorities from contacting venture capitalist to fund their growth and future thus exacerbating the problem.

Women and minorities often are not even received all that much better by other women or minorities. Even established and successful companies, run by women or minorities, face a lot of challenges and difficulty raising money since they are still viewed as “too risky” by most investors.

The Venture Capital community is much less inclined to explore how diverse businesses might be the right fit for their fund or can present outstanding opportunities to take calculated expansion risks. They often tend to stay within their comfort zone and the same circles, businesses, investment advisors, etc. Change is sometime difficult to wrap their heads around and this often reinforces their investing bias.

Women and multicultural entrepreneurs represent a huge missed investment opportunity since together they represent a huge part of the United States population and quite a large number are successful entrepreneurs. Additionally, government agencies require corporations to do business with a diverse supplier network.

Overcoming the Challenges:

We all need to work to break the cycle to break investor bias!

Everyone needs to reconsider who they think of when they hear the word “entrepreneur” and include a wider, more diverse mix, into their thinking and investing. Women and minorities are just as talented, intelligent, and innovative as anyone else.  Often, they have had to deal with greater challenges to get where they are and have more practice with overcoming business obstacles and challenges. Women and minorities need to be as loud, forceful, and public about their business ventures as others who have done so for decades. They need to make a dedicated effort to get in front of Venture Capitalists for funding and consideration.