When Co-Founders and Co-Presidents Maria Salamanca and Rami Reyes founded LatinxVC they wanted to not only change the tech industry but overcome the statistic that only 2 percent of partner-level development professionals were Hispanic as reported by the Pew Research Center.
Early in his career, Reyes found himself in a situation when he was a freshly appointed partner. Reyes was at a Venture Capitalist convention he happened to meet two VCs at two different companies, At the end of their meetings with me, they asked me if I spoke Spanish. And they were super-shocked, as they said I was the first Latino VC they’d ever encountered. And they were much older than me so that was pretty shocking to hear.”
Only 14 percent of VCs have Latinx investment teams. A number not looked upon fondly by many. This is what inspired Reyes to launch an organization aimed at giving Latinx members a platform where they can finally take a seat at the table.
Salamanca had her beginning working at All Raise, a non-profit aimed at supporting female investment partners. Early they both noticed that there was not only a discrepancy with partners but with junior investment professionals as well, “One of the things we started to notice, from both pulling the data as well as from our own networks and understanding of what was going on, was the analyst and associate class is pretty light. We actually have a significantly larger number of folks at the partner level and up or founding GP partners,” Salamanca said.
Salamanca and Reyes though are choosing to combat this problem head-on. They plan on using capital acquired from the Silicon Valley Bank to staff fully employ their company which was managed by volunteers. It will also be used on other projects too like grow its existing fellowship program, job platform, and mentorship platform.
LatinxVC also has ties with the larger minority programs. They engage in Bi-monthly meetings with All Rise and BLCK VC to double up their efforts and engage in more thoughtful conversations that affect the community as a whole.