Building your team is only one aspect of making informed decisions about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Having diversity on our cap table has been essential to our success as a minority female entrepreneur and co-founder of a women’s health firm. Funding alone will not be as valuable as deconstructing your cap table to diversify your investors depending on a number of parameters.
Since I’ve been working in the field of women’s health for the past ten years, I find it puzzling that there are so few diverse leaders and investors. Diversifying our cap table has been a high focus for my firm from the beginning and will remain so as it pertains to attracting investment. Diversity will be prioritized, adding a richness of experience, viewpoint, and skills. We were aware that in order to do this, we had to concentrate on creating a team and product that people would want to invest in. Many businesses express a desire to diversify their capital structure, but how should you go about doing so?
Set your investment criterion up front. My co-founders and I agreed that we would choose our investors based on a range of criteria, including gender, color, experience, and a strong enthusiasm for our objective. These considerations included the kind of investor (VC, angel, family office, etc.). My co-founders and I listed the justifications for each criterion as we came up with them.
Funding alone will not be as valuable as deconstructing your cap table to diversify your investors depending on a number of parameters. It was crucial for us to have investors who were both women and people of color who recognized the scope of the issue we were attempting to address as a company since it was a problem that affected women everywhere.
Recent research has indicated that patients of color and women are disproportionately affected by medical gaslighting. To bring on board people who we believed would share our enthusiasm for our work and be encouraging along the way, it was essential to look for investors who matched this description. Clarify your objectives and the value each investor will bring to the table when establishing your criteria. Consider as a group what you would like and why if you could have it your way.
