Kathryn Finney created a pipeline into the tech world to help Black and Latinx women founders become successful.
SAN FRANCISCO – In the early days of Zume Pizza, visitors to Julia Collins' robotic food prep company in Silicon Valley would greet her at the door and say, "Can you grab me a water? I'm here to meet with the founder." When pitching her business to investment partners at venture capital firms, Collins was nearly always the only woman and always the only black person in the room.
Then, late last year, a hairline crack surfaced in the invisible yet seemingly impenetrable barrier that limits black women's access to the tech world. A $375 million investment gave Zume Pizza a valuation of $2.25 billion.
It wasn't just the company she co-founded that reached unicorn status. Collins did, too, as the first black woman whose tech company is valued at $1 billion or more by investors. Now that she's working on a new startup in regenerative agriculture, investors are calling her.
Generating tens of billions in revenue, black women are the nation's fastest-growing demographic of entrepreneurs. For decades at the nexus of money and power in Silicon Valley, they've been underestimated and overlooked. Research shows that black women are among the least likely to get checks cut by venture capitalists. So few raise venture money that the percentage is, statistically speaking, nearly zero.
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