Of the $6.8 billion venture capital investments that poured into startups in 2021, only 2.1 percent of it went to Latinx founders, according to recent data. While this is up from the 1.7 percent invested in 2020, Latinx founders and founders of color broadly struggle with receiving as much capital as their white counterparts.
In aims to pour more capital into Latinx-founded companies, Boston-based VC firm Visible Hands has entered a partnership with Google for Startups to develop a 20-week, virtual fellowship program for Latinx founders.
The fellowship, announced earlier this week, will grant each founder accepted into the cohort with $10,000 in non-dilutive funding to help kickstart their company. Upon completion of the program, founders have the opportunity to receive an additional investment of $150,000 from Visible Hands.
“Latinx founders are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in America, but they too often lack the support necessary to take their ideas, and their businesses, to the next level,” Kaili Emmrich, head of North America Google for Startups, said in a statement. “We’re so proud to partner with Visible Hands to provide underrepresented founders with the hands-on support, both financial and strategic, to grow into flourishing businesses and help to increase founder diversity in our industry.”
The 20-week fellowship program will begin in August and ideally give founders room to pursue their startups full-time. Interested founders who identify as Latinx, Indigenous Latinx, Caribbean, Central or South American can apply to be in the program. Applications close on June 24.
“The Visible Hands founder community and network is extremely tight-knit and has nation-wide scale,” Danny Navarro, a Cambridge-based representative for Google for Startups, told Built In via email. “We’ll layer in Google experts to provide help throughout the program in areas like goal-setting and design. An ideal participant for this program is a sharp founder with a great idea and is trying to think through getting their first 10 customers.”
Outside of capital and business focused-guidance, the fellowship program will also offer founders a well-being component with a dedicated wellness expert who can provide therapy support and mental health coaching. This to Navarro will allow founders to have someone to talk to about the inevitable ups and downs of the founder journey.
News of the fellowship comes alongside Google’s recent announcement to invest $75 million in Massachusetts this year. The investment is widespread as the search engine giant has aims to build offices and data centers across the country, alongside creating at least 12,000 new full-time Google jobs in the U.S. this year.
