underrepresented-founders
(24)
Musa Capital bets on the people inside the workflow
The Palo Alto venture firm turns operator knowledge into a way to find and support young companies. Its latest focus: AI that earns a place in the working day.
Kapor Capital bets on the gaps
The Oakland venture firm looks for businesses that make money by widening access. Its most useful idea may be what happens after the check clears.
Progressive Ventures bets on the first customer
An AI demo can win a room. An enterprise customer has to buy. Progressive Ventures is building a seed fund around the distance between those two events.
TRANSFORM VC starts at zero.
A venture firm betting on overlooked founders has a deceptively simple demand: pick one impact metric, and count from day one. Even when the answer is zero.
Westbound Equity bets on a bigger circle
The venture firm pairs startup checks with access to people who can help - and pledges half its carried interest to nonprofits closing opportunity gaps.
Nitin Rai bought out his investors. Then he became one.
After building First Insight and buying back his investors’ shares, Nitin Rai took a seat on the other side of the table. At Elevate Capital, he backs founders who know what it feels like to be overlooked.
Nex Cubed bets on the founders venture capital keeps missing
A free HBCU startup program exposed an expensive omission: promising founders still needed money. Nex Cubed answered with a venture fund, $120,000 initial investments and advisors paid to get their hands dirty.
FoundersBoost asks for six weeks. Your equity stays yours.
The global startup program charges no fees and takes no equity. Its real price is six weeks of work, awkward questions and a much shorter pitch.
Atlanta Tech Village sells the office. The introductions are the point.
A renovation budget that more than doubled, a second location its founder once ruled out, and a practical bet: put entrepreneurs close enough to help one another.
Hatch Enterprise UK opens the door before the pitch
Five applicants chased every place on Hatch’s first Disabled and neurodivergent Launchpad. The UK charity is making a business out of a neglected question: who gets the help to begin?
Foundervine knows talent needs an introduction
A good business idea can travel only so far without the right people. Foundervine builds the programmes, partnerships and introductions that help overlooked founders get further.
Colorintech has a good problem: too few seats
Its 2025 AI pilot attracted 805 applications and had room for fewer than half. The nonprofit behind Black Tech Fest is turning access into something you can practise, use and measure.
SEED SPOT Built an Accelerator for the Founders the Accelerator Economy Forgot
The Phoenix nonprofit does not take equity. It teaches founders the unglamorous work - budgets, buyer math, customer interviews and the three-minute pitch - then uses philanthropy to put better networks within reach.
The Founder Who Quit Fixing Pitches and Started Rewiring the Room
After raising $9.6 million and still losing her first company, Allison Byers stopped treating access to capital as a pitch-deck problem. Scroobious is her attempt to turn cold outreach into useful relationships - for $30 a month, not a cut of the check.
Backstage Capital Found 200 Companies. The Hard Part Was Funding Itself.
Arlan Hamilton built a venture firm around founders other investors overlooked. Its next test is making that investment thesis support an enduring business.
DivInc charges founders nothing. Keeping it free is the hard part.
The Texas nonprofit helps overlooked founders build technology businesses without giving up equity. Its own funding squeeze reveals what that promise takes.
Graham & Walker turned a support group into a $10 million fund
Leslie Feinzaig built a community for founders who struggled to get heard. Now Graham & Walker writes early checks, teaches the mechanics of fundraising, and asks whether every founder needs venture capital at all.
Lightship Foundation picks up the tab for a better shot at startup success
Free founder training, paid-for hotel rooms and a tech conference with cultural pull: Lightship Foundation is making access to entrepreneurship a practical proposition. Its founder knows what happens when the money runs out.
Visible Hands Is Rewriting Who Gets to Be Early
The Boston pre-seed firm does more than write small checks. It builds a scouting system, support network and regional fellowship machine around founders the venture market routinely reaches too late.
Genevieve Lemarchal
Genevieve Lemarchal is the Managing Partner of Suncoast Ventures and Head of Healthcare at Expert Dojo, one of Southern California's most active pre-seed venture funds. A serial entrepreneur turned investor, she focuses on early-stage healthcare startups tackling critical gaps in addiction recovery, maternal care, chronic disease management, and digital health. With a portfolio spanning 35+ companies across 7 countries, she champions underrepresented founders - 50% female, 37-43% from underrepresented backgrounds - and hosts the AdVentureous Podcast, where she interviews entrepreneurs and VCs about building companies that matter.
Maria Palma
Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture capital firm. With over a decade of venture experience and investments in 35+ companies, she focuses on early-stage AI investments across application and infrastructure layers. Before Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital in London and a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York. She co-founded NYC Blend, a nonprofit connecting underrepresented founders to venture capital, and was named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025.'
Sydney Thomas
Sydney Thomas is the Founding General Partner of Symphonic Capital, a $13.5M debut fund investing at the intersection of health, wealth, and climate resilience for the 99%. She was the first hire at Precursor Ventures in 2016, scaled the firm from 10 investments to 400+ and $200M+ AUM over seven years, and then left to build on her own terms. She created the landmark Black Women in VC list, co-founded the Women of Color in VC network, and relocated from San Francisco to her hometown of San Diego to anchor her firm there. A Kauffman Fellow, Duke and Berkeley Haas alum, she backs pre-seed founders outside coastal tech hubs who are building essential systems for people the industry routinely ignores.
Ulili Onovakpuri
Uriridiakoghene 'Ulili' Onovakpuri is a trailblazing venture capitalist who spent 10+ years at Kapor Capital, rising from analyst to Co-Managing Partner and co-raising the firm's largest-ever fund - $126M Fund III in 2022. One of very few Black female managing partners in VC history, she backed 70+ companies with a focus on digital health, health tech, and people operations, while also founding the longest-running VC fellowship program for underrepresented individuals. Her own childhood diagnosis of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis in Hunter's Point, San Francisco, where she grew up, directly shaped her conviction that healthcare access is a systemic justice issue. In May 2025 she departed Kapor Capital for what she called 'a purposeful pause,' and has since joined Motley Fool Ventures as a Venture Partner.
Lea Bajc
Lea Bajc is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and board member with over two decades of experience spanning Silicon Valley and Europe. Born in Croatia and raised in Sweden, she holds degrees from Stockholm School of Economics, HEC Paris, and Harvard Business School. At Northzone Ventures, she co-led landmark investments in iZettle ($2.2B exit to PayPal) and Trustpilot (LSE IPO). She later co-founded Averon in Silicon Valley, raising $20M from Marc Benioff. Now based in Paris, she invests through Blue Horizon and Ozone X Ventures (backing underrepresented founders), serves on corporate boards, and is authoring 'Love After Love' — a forthcoming book reframing divorce as an opportunity for reinvention. A Kauffman Fellow and Forbes Technology Council member, she speaks six languages and is a certified nutritionist.