Busting the myths behind why venture capitalists don’t fund various startups • TechCrunch

people can never come across a word to explain what is happening to women and minorities within the company. Are these founders overlooked or underresearched? Underestimated and underrepresented ? Marginalized? Discriminated? Or just ignored?

The excuses used to justify these nicknames are also scattered. Women only received 1.9% of all venture capital funding last year because they only start beauty and wellness businesses; there is a lack of a proven track record; it’s too early, it’s too risky and there’s a pipeline problem. Maybe she’ll get married, start a family, and leave the business behind.

And black founders have raised 1% of venture funds because there aren’t enough of them to launch; they are a minority of the population and therefore deserve a minority of funds; their products and markets tap into something that only their community can identify with; there is not enough traction, they are not qualified; or, as a Twitter user wrote, they are not “male, pale, and Yale.”

Ah, yes, that explains everything. Women are too emotional to run businesses. A female founder told TechCrunch that she overheard an investor say he wouldn’t invest in a company founded by women because “she was boring.”

Men, on the other hand, are not troublesome. They are competent and skilled and as we all know sexism and racial discrimination went poof after the civil rights and third-wave feminism movements. Since then, decisions about people of color and women have been based solely on quantitative, provable facts. Obviously.

Indeed, fact-based investor due diligence often overlooks the fact that companies founded by women have higher returns than those founded by men. The rest of the data regarding bias in the venture capital industry is so nebulous that it is difficult to reveal much of it. Without transparency, it’s difficult to determine exactly how many people of color and women are pitching, making it difficult to gauge just how disproportionate the funding for these groups really is. There is, however, a way to put aside some common misconceptions.

On the one hand, women (especially black women) are more likely to start a business than men (and continue to open businesses in increasing numbers), which means that the idea that there is not enough women to invest in is just plain wrong.