VC Diversity Index
This is our updated index of diversity in the venture capital industry. It’s the fourth time since 2015 we have published this list in order to put some hard numbers around the lack of diversity in venture capital. For three months, we gathered data on 713 senior investment professionals at the 102 biggest firms. Unlike other studies of VC diversity, we rank individual firms from best to worst. Those rankings are based on scores of gender and ethnic diversity. We provide scores for each of those categories while the overall score is an average of the two. In each case, the maximum score is 10 and the minimum score is zero.
Please enter your email to view the rankings.
Firm Selection
The VC Diversity Index includes firms that met these criteria.
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 did not include age as a diversity factor.
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.
Filter by: Assets Under Management
$250M - $1B · +$1BHeadcount
5 or fewer people · 6 - 10 people · +10 peopleOverall Rank | Firm | Gender Score | Ethnicity Score | Overall score | AUM | Headcount |
---|
Org charts (+)
Projects (+)