Firm Selection

The VC Diversity Index includes firms that met these criteria.

1. Based in United States
2. Early-Stage Technology Focus
   We selected firms making Series A and Series B stage investments, but did not exclude any investors that extend to growth stage products.
3. Active Firms
   Active was defined as any firm that has raised a new fund in the past five years or that are building their portfolio with new investments. We used publicly available material and Pitchbook.
4. Largest Firms
   We set $250 million in assets under management (AUM) as the minimum for inclusion, using data from Pitchbook.
5. High Mindshare
   We recognize that a number of firms may not meet the minimum threshold of AUM but may still command a lot of influence in the industry. Therefore, using Mattermark's Mindshare Score as a barometer, we included firms that ranked highly in Mindshare even if they ranked below $250M AUM.

The above criteria resulted in a list of 73 firms representing over $210B in AUM.

People Selection

While a great many people work in the venture capital industry, a much smaller number of people are involved in making investment decisions.

General Partner or Managing Director who make investment decisions and/or represents the firm on the board of portfolio companies. We also include venture partners and board partners to the extent they are listed on the firm's website and are active in making investment decisions. We excluded team members based internationally to focus on team diversity within the U.S.

This process yielded a list of 624 investment team leaders across the 73 firms selected.

Gender & Ethnicity Scoring

We used a diversity index based on probability: the chance that any two people from one firm will be the same gender or ethnic background. The lower the score, the lower the diversity. This approach uses the same principle as the Simpson Index (ecology) and the Herfindahl Index (economics).

The ethnicity categories use the same definitions as the 2010 U.S. Census. "Other" includes Native American.

While we acknowledge that there are many different gender options, for this study, participants identified as either male or female.

Age Scoring

This year we have changed the age scoring to improve how we value the diversity of age. The diversity score is based on the probability that someone encounters a person within five years of their own age at their firm. In other words, if all partners are within the same five-year age range, the firm scores zero on age diversity. If no partners are within five years of each other’s age, the firm scores a 10 on age diversity.

Overall Score

We believe that Gender, Ethnicity, and Age are equally relevant variables in evaluating a firm's future diversity. Therefore, the Overall Score is calculated through a simple average of each of the above scores.

Other Definitions & Notes

We gathered data from publicly available sources, such as LinkedIn and firms’ web sites. We share each firm’s data with the firm and welcomed updates, corrections and comments. Many firms corrected our data. Some did not respond.

The Top Tech Company comparable is an average of publicly available diversity data regarding leadership teams for six of today’s top technology firms: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft.