(Fortune) JoAnn Price is used to busting venture capital stereotypes. As an influential Black woman running 28-year-old Fairview Capital Partners—a pioneer of diversity-focused investing—that’s been her whole career. Back in the 1990s, she entered an industry that almost never backs or hires people who look like her. And while things are beginning to change—as a new report published by her firm today reveals—there’s still a long, long way to go.
Price was first recruited to Fairview in 1992, tasked with getting the firm off the ground and raising money from public pension funds and other institutional investors to back it. At the time, pension funds had only invested an estimated $50 million—ever—in minority-led venture capital firms. Price wasn’t the first choice for the job: “Of course, they were looking for a man,” she recalls. “But at the end of the day, all of those super-duper men were not willing to take that level of risk.”
Three decades later, Price is seeing some glimmers of hope in terms of her industry’s willingness to bet on more women and people of color. Both the VC firms that she invests in, and the “limited partner” institutional investors (LPs) that she raises money from, are pledging more capital to underrepresented founders and fund managers. The aim: to create a more equitable startup ecosystem, in which people of color and women of all races share in the enormous wealth created by billion-dollar IPOs and sales of venture-backed companies.
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