VC Roundtable: Venture's role in supporting insurtech diversity

January 22, 2021 5:14 AM

We asked our VC panelists six questions. The sixth: How can insurtech VCs do more to find, elevate and support companies founded by women and BIPOC?

Go back to our VC roundtable homepage, with bios for participants and more.

Ryan Helon, Rev1 Ventures

BLCK VC has written sobering content on the lack of funding for BIPOC entrepreneurs. Some of their writing can be found here, here, and here. They advocate that one step VCs can take to help elevate/fund BIPOC entrepreneurs is to hire diverse investment professionals to their teams. Without a diverse investment team you cannot expect to build a diverse pipeline of investment opportunities. Lack of racial and gender equity in venture affects everyone negatively. We all should focus on building our own personal stakes in advocating for equity in our industry. Continuing to hire build diversity on our own team is a core focus of ours this year and in the future.

Kyle Beatty, American Family Ventures

Harrison Steg

It begins with a commitment from the fund’s partnership. Then, I believe there are several ways to purposefully take actions that will increase the diversity of VC-backed founders. It includes the investors you hire, the networks you invest in building, the outbound deal sourcing you prioritize, and the areas where you devote your time. We are actively working on multiple fronts at AFV and have much more work to do in this important area.

Martha Notaras, Brewer Lane

VCs need to commit to including diverse founders in the conversation. A useful approach is to leverage the networks of every member of the team. And the more the diverse the investor team, the more diverse their networks are, so building the team thoughtfully is a good beginning. CRM tools can provide the data to hold the team accountable for identifying and evaluating startups with diverse founders. Because, of course, only the startups that make it into the pipeline are going to get funded.

Ben Bergsma, Munich Re Ventures

Richard Morgenstein

I think the No. 1 thing we can do is get outside of our pre-existing networks. It’s no secret that VCs rely heavily on their networks to source companies and meet new founders. While our industry is slowly improving, often these networks can be pretty homogenous. One blessing in disguise from this pandemic is that VCs can now take more meetings than usual since being fully remote. Our travel schedules are non-existent, and introductory video meetings are usually only 15 to 30 minutes. So I would encourage all insurtech VCs to instill in their staff that diversity of thought is critical to innovation and to be more open to taking meetings with new founders outside their traditional networks who demonstrate passion, ingenuity and the drive to innovate. To that end, MRV is now partnered with HBCU.VC and we’re very excited about working with such a great organization.

Sam Evans, Eos

The insurance industry as a whole suffers from a lack of diversity, but this is starting to change. Industry-wide initiatives will also hopefully encourage more women and BIPOC Insurtwch founders. For us it’s important to have an open and proactive approach, including a willingness to engage and meet with the vast majority of companies that we are introduced to. We also support initiatives with other organisations including the Diversity.VC internship programme. We are also proud of the diverse background of our portfolio company CEOs.

Eric Emmons, MassMutual Ventures

Eric Emmons, MassMutual Ventures

Venture firms and insurance companies alike should actively support regional business incubators and accelerators, both financially and with executive time, so that these entities can actively bring forward a diverse group of founders. MassChallenge, which MMV supports, is a great example of this model. MassChallenge is a global, zero-equity startup accelerator, founded in Boston back in 2009 that brings startup founders together with financial services executives to form companies in a more collaborative manner. This helps bring more new founders into an industry where access to industry data and incumbent knowledge can otherwise be an insurmountable barrier.

Erik Ross, Nationwide

We’ve been spending time on this as a team. We are focused on expanding our deal-sourcing network and contributing sponsorship dollars to high-quality organizations uplifting underrepresented founders across insurtech and fintech.