There Wasn\u2019t a Community for Black Women in Venture Capital. So Black Women in Venture Capital Made Their Own.

of all the Black women she could think of in venture capital. “It essentially increased visibility to all the Black women in VC, because I realized nobody realized that there [were] actually more than three of us,” she says now. The list was a jumping off point for community—many catalogued ended up guests at those dinner parties. She even started a group for women of color in VC to meet up quarterly, a chance to connect and converse.

“I do think we build the community mostly on our own for ourselves,” says Bent, looking back. “It’s not because the rest of the industry isn’t supportive. I do think the rest of the industry is quite supportive, but I there’s a lot of value in building community and being with folks where you can just ‘let down your hair’ and describe some of that, share your stories to some of the frustrations.”

Kunst is one of those people who decided to start her own firm: After stints in fashion and marketing, she bopped around the start-up space, and even started a company in the sports media space , all while helping other venture funds realize how “deeply non-diverse” they were. When her company shuttered three years after starting, she decided to leap full-time into VC.

But they’re not just meeting up to ink deals. “I always have an email in my inbox from [Sarah],” says Bent. “She's like, ‘Hey, do you want to hop on this mentorship thing?’” Sykes says she often calls Kunst for gut-checks and opinions on next moves. “Some of my closest friends are Black women I met in venture and they're on the board of my nonprofit and they're the people I text every day and they're my mentors, and it kind of really runs the gamut,” says Sykes.

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