Close your eyes and picture a typical “tech entrepreneur.” If you always see a young white man — perhaps a hoodie is involved — you are not alone, and PowerMoves, Black Tech Week, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Case Foundation and many other organizations want to change that.
The statistics are alarming. As the second annual Black Tech Week got underway in Miami, and PowerMoves Miami launched its operations with a bootcamp and pitch contests, a new study recently surfaced that showed that of the 10,000-plus venture deals sealed from 2012 to 2014, just 24 of them were led by a black women founder. Of those few that have raised money, the average amount of funding was just $36,000, even though black women comprise the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S., according to the report, Project Diane by Digital Undivided, which calls black women founders “the real unicorns of tech.”
The statistics are only a little better for all minority entrepreneurs. PowerMoves, an entrepreneurship organization for entrepreneurs of color that just launched in Miami through Knight Foundation support,offers these numbers: While African-American and Hispanic students earn nearly 20 percent of computer science degrees, they make up only 9 percent of the technology industry and less than 1 percent of technology company founders. To help close this gap, PowerMoves is connecting entrepreneurs of color to mentors, capital, support and investment opportunities. The national initiative launched in New Orleans in 2014 has helped roughly 100 companies from across the country secure more than $27 million in capital commitments, the organization said.
