Tim Smith is Sifted’s Iberia correspondent.Project Syndicate is a not-for-profit institution. Ultimately, this benefits us all - the future is reliant on innovative, systemic and intersectional thinking.” “Hence why we’re reimagining what a founder story looks like so we don’t overlook them going forward. “The next generation of unicorns will be inconceivable and undiscoverable with the current investor mindset,” says Tooley. Tooley says that i³ is also currently exploring the possibility of launching its own dedicated VC fund, after seeing the enthusiasm from high-net-worth individuals who’ve supported the angel syndicate.įor him, the project is all about social mobility and giving people access to capital who currently aren’t getting it. One recent example of this in Europe comes from Cornerstone VC, a new £20m fund born out of a Black-led angel group. “There are so many great models within the Black community on how this has been done, so that’s been a big inspiration.” It’s about being on those investment advisory boards and having a broader impact on decisions,” he says. “When you talk about queer capital, it’s not just about queer people getting investment and making investing themselves. Tooley says that seeing LGBTQ+ people promoted to senior investment positions is key to building up “queer capital” in the entrepreneurial community, and that there are many lessons to be learnt from how Black entrepreneurs have achieved this. We believe entrepreneurs have quicker timelines to drive this change, and that’s what we’re accelerating.” Queer capital “In order to foster systemic change we need to empower queers to the top, but that can be a long process. “LGBTQ+ individuals are less likely to successfully raise capital,” he says. This, he believes, can happen by giving diverse entrepreneurs greater economic empowerment, coupled with opportunities to advance into senior positions in board rooms and investment committees later in their careers. Tooley has coined a term for this approach - “intersectional investing” - and says he hopes the syndicate will foster systemic change within the private sector. “They’ve been very welcoming and accommodating to a community that is prioritising queer, non-binary and people of colour.” “We’ve had some very senior angel investors who have said they wanted a community like this,” he says. I³ is not the only LGBTQ+ investment group out there - others in the space include Gaingels and Out Investors - but Tooley says that the individuals joining his initiative have voiced their appreciation for its commitment to intersectionality within the LGBTQ+ community. “Many of these entrepreneurs have innovative ideas to disrupt industries that come from their background, experiences and resilience - but they don’t have access to capital, and investors don’t have access to their ideas,” he says. ![]() He adds that intersectional founders naturally have the skills and resilience needed to build disruptive startups in challenging times, due to the barriers they often have to overcome in daily life. This, Tooley says, ensures that i³ isn’t just pushing startups that are “gay for the sake of it” and makes sure they have solid business potential. These investors will be given opportunities to invest in startups that have gone through i³’s initial vetting system, which ranks startups on three factors: investability, innovation and intersectionality. ![]() Tooley says that the syndicate is close to signing its first investment, with another not far away. The syndicate will invest in startups through special purpose vehicles, supporting raises ranging from pre-seed deals below £100k to Series A deals in the low millions. Investors wanting to join the syndicate can sign up on i³’s website. The syndicate includes more than 50 investors who are either queer or intersectional themselves, or “demonstrated intersectional allies” - investors who’ve backed diverse founders in the past, or actively shown support for them. In the context of VC investment, that means that while female founders might generally find it more difficult to raise investment than men, this task is even harder for women of colour. Intersectionality is a term that describes how people from marginalised identities can face challenges in different ways, particularly when those identities intersect with each other.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |