Chicago’s startups are becoming more diverse, according to new data from Chicago Blend, a local organization working to bring more people of color and women into Chicago’s startup and VC industries.
At a virtual town hall event Tuesday afternoon, Chicago Blend shared data showing that more women, Black and Latinx workers are joining Chicago startups.
In 2020, staffs at more than 100 startup companies were 38.9% women, up from 32.7% in 2019. Staffs were 15.5% Latinx in 2020, compared to 7.2% in 2019, and 6.9% Black, up from 5.3% in 2019.
The data set consists of 112 startups, all of which are backed by at least one Chicago VC firm. Most of the startups included are based in Chicago.
Speakers at Tuesday’s event saw the growth as a sign some of the city's diversity initiatives are making a difference. Like the startup and venture capital industries broadly, Chicago’s startup and venture capital scene has long struggled with diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Looking back at two years of data, we’re happy to see some progress,” said Lindsay Knight, the founder and a board member of Chicago Blend and the director of platform at Chicago Ventures, during Tuesday’s event. “We launched with a critical question: Where are the major gaps in demographics in Chicago’s VCs and startups? And where do we as VCs have an opportunity and an obligation to enact change?”
Tuesday's event included speakers like Ryan Mundy, the former NFL player and Chicago Blend board member who is now the founder of Alkeme Health, a wellness company tailored towards Black users, and Rodrigo Garcia, the deputy state treasurer and chief information officer for the State of Illinois.
"We've been happy to see some small increases in both racial and gender diversity between 2018 and 2020," Mundy said.
Other data revealed Tuesday showed that board members of Chicago startups have also diversified. The data shows that in 2020, 15.9% of Chicago startup board members were women, up from 9.8% in 2019. About 6% were Latinx, up from less than 1% in 2019. And 1.8% were Black, up from 1% in 2019.
To address this specific lack of diversity at the board level, Chicago Blend created “The BlendList" in 2019, a roster of women and Black, Hispanic, Latinx and Asian board candidates in Chicago and around the country.
On the investor side, Chicago Blend data from last year showed that Chicago’s venture capital industry is also slowly diversifying, with more women and people of color working at local firms.
The numbers showed that the number of women working at Chicago VC firms had increased from 28% in 2018 to 32% in 2020. When it came to race and ethnicity, people of color made up about 19% of the local VC industry in 2020 compared to 14% in 2018.
Chicago Blend, launched in 2018, is a collaborative effort by venture capitalists in Chicago to measure and increase "DEI" (diversity, equity and inclusion) in Chicago VC firms and the startups that they back.
Modeled after a similar program in New York called NYC Blend, Chicago Blend is focused on three specific initiatives: Collect diversity data across all Chicago venture firms, collect diversity data on Chicago's venture-backed startups, and build out a resource library where VCs and startups can go to find tools to help increase diversity, equity and inclusion on their teams.
“We know that recruiting can be tough, but we believe in our world, this isn’t a pipeline problem, it’s more of a network or an access problem,” Knight said. “We help to create network access and visibility to great candidates or founders, who don’t already have a way in.”
