Day: September 27, 2022

Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein founded a venture capital firm in 2011 with a counter-intuitive mission: to generate elite investment returns by investing in impact-focused startups that help level the playing field in financial services, healthcare, and other industries.

Now, more than a decade later, the firm they founded, Kapor Capital, is taking its biggest step yet—becoming one of the largest Black-led firms in a VC landscape that has seen funding to Black entrepreneurs decline this year.

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Rashad Robinson, founder of the racial justice organization Color of Change, believes that for far too long, Silicon Valley behemoths have prioritized profits over the well-being of Black consumers. The group is now laying out its most detailed vision for how lawmakers can intervene.

Some of the group’s ideas, such as limiting discriminatory use of personal data and requiring companies to test their algorithms for biases, have already been enshrined in legislation. However, few, if any, have become law. Others appear to be breaking new ground by urging Washington to take a more aggressive regulatory response.

The agenda calls for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to incorporate a civil rights lens into merger reviews, allowing them to “challenge and reverse mergers that fail racial equity impact assessments.”

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