She pointed to fintech startup Esusu for example. The corporate experiences hire funds to main credit score bureaus, serving to tenants construct credit score—a profit hardly ever out there since hire has traditionally not counted towards credit score scores.
“You know the way many individuals are affected by that, and how one can’t construct credit score?” Williams mentioned. “Your automotive invoice works for credit score, however your hire doesn’t. In order that downside is going through [a huge percent] of the inhabitants. And so we strive to have a look at firms that the majority VC folks [would pass up because they] need to deal with that smaller quantity. These are trillion-dollar industries that we’re that have an effect on many of the inhabitants.”
Backing ladies and other people of coloration
Since its launch in 2017, Serena Ventures has prioritized ladies founders and people from underrepresented backgrounds, in addition to upstarts growing revolutionary options that search to enhance fairness for ladies and other people of coloration.
As of final 12 months, greater than half of the businesses in Serena Ventures’ portfolio are women-founded. The portfolio additionally contains virtually 50% Black founders and over 10% Latino founders.
As a Black lady enterprise capitalist, Williams is uniquely positioned to bolster companies run by folks from underrepresented teams, she mentioned, as a result of “you must begin on the prime. In case you don’t change that, it doesn’t move down in any respect.”
“It’s actually about who writes the checks,” she continued. “As soon as you modify who’s writing the checks, then you definitely get totally different founders. When it’s the identical folks writing the checks, they’ll get the identical buyers, and it’s a vicious cycle, proper?
“We’ve got a number of ladies on our staff. We discover extra underrepresented founders. We discover extra ladies founders. That’s why our portfolio has a lot variety—as a result of we see issues in another way.”
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