Atlanta Tech Angels is pushing two diversity initiatives this quarter to make sure that a fair amount of their investments are made to female or minority founders and that their membership is diverse as well.
One of those initiatives is making sure at least one of the three startups that pitch to the organization at their monthly member meeting has a female or minority founder. The other is putting the first $1,500 of the $2,000 membership dues from female or minority members toward their first investment instead of the nonprofit's operating costs.
ATA president Matthew May believes that a more diverse environment would encourage more minority and female founders to apply for funding. He recently asked its board members to look back on how well the organization had done with investing in minority or female startups over the previous five years and found a pleasant surprise: 48% of investments were made to such startups.
May attributes a key part of ATA's success to having Bernie Dickson as president of the organization during that time, which likely encouraged more female or minority founders to apply.
"My philosophy is that there is no silver bullet for diversity initiatives and that we should try different things knowing that not one of them will completely solve the gap," he said.
The effort comes at a time when Atlanta minority founders are getting a small percentage of startup funding while the city’s startups are breaking records for raising venture capital.
Last month, Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that investors pumped $3.7 billion into all Atlanta startups last year, with about 12% of that going to Black founders.
According to Crunchbase data, venture capital going to Black founders in Atlanta is still higher than any other U.S. market. The city also has a larger Black population than those cities at 51%, according to the Census Bureau.
“No one organization can solve all problems, but I think ATA has a great job of diversifying its investee companies,” said Jon Gosier, who has been a board member of ATA since January. “Where we are trying to improve is by expanding the tent of who our angels are, in other words, the people writing the checks.”
May also believes that the current diversity push by ATA is a way to avoid patterns of behavior shown by organizations with predominantly white/male members.
"When companies are determining who should fill vacant positions or get attention, they're likely to select people who look like them in their network as opposed to thinking about how to diversify in order to bring better ideas,” said May.
ATA is one of the nation’s top angel investing networks with members and venture capital affiliates in Atlanta and across the Southeast. Its members provide seed- and early-stage capital to entrepreneurs seeking between $200,000 to $2 million. They also provide mentorship, industry expertise and valuable contacts.
One of its largest recent investments was made to Oncolens, a cancer care platform designed around multidisciplinary care, founded by Anju Mathew. Other prominent companies ATA has invested in include fintech company Qoins, healthtech company ARMR Systems and agritech company Trellis.
“We hope to be intentional with this and continue things that work and, when they don’t, think of other things that could make it happen,” said May. “No one thing got us here, no one thing will get us out,”
