PayPal plans to invest more than $50 million in eight Black- and Latinx-led venture capital firms, the New York Times reports. One of the firms is Slauson & Co. in Los Angeles, founded by Austin Clements.
This new investment “certainly moves the needle in terms of what we’re trying to do,” the longtime Plug In South LA mentor and Urban Tech Connect speaker told the paper. Clements was a principal at TenOneTen Ventures prior to starting Slauson & Co. with Ajay Relan, who was previously a GP at Century City-based Queensbridge Venture Partners, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Over the summer PayPal vowed to put $530 million toward supporting Black-owned businesses and minority communities in the United States. By investing in the VC firms, the company hopes to “provide crucial capital to entrepreneurs at a stage that PayPal itself can’t,” the Times article said.
For our regular curation of must-read innovation and tech news, the Plug In South LA Beat, we’re spotlighting this big win for South LA: