"70% of the US is women and people of color, and yet they only receive 10% of venture capital funding, but that's not just a problem that's also an opportunity. So, we see an enormous missed market opportunity, and we wanted to be a part of catalyzing that change."
Yasmin Cruz Ferrine is the co-founder and general partner of Visible Hands - a 14-week, virtual-first accelerator on a mission to highlight and invest in the limitless potential of overlooked founders. She and her co-founders, Daniel Acheampong and Justin Kang, started the project two years ago when they decided they wanted to stop relying on invisible forces slowly changing the face of Silicon Valley and take matters into their own hands. 410 meetings later, Yasmin and her team successfully closed their fund.
But, why did it take so many meetings to close the fund? And what are the biggest obstacles preventing more women and people of color from leading companies in Silicon Valley?
Yasmin and Elias get into all of that and more in this episode of the American Dream.
Key Moments:
- (1:44) Yasmin’s background
- (6:59) What is Visible Hands?
- (9:58) The underlying conditions that make it difficult for Yasmin to raise money for her fund
- (20:05) Which comes first: 10xing the amount of LatinX VC funds now, or making sure the preexisting ones break through and succeed?
- (28:31) What Visible Hands does on a day-to-day basis
- (29:46) The difference between Visible Hands and Y Combinator
- (32:09) The logistics behind Visible Hands’ 14-week cohort program
- (34:10)Yasmin’s answer to anyone who says: “We can’t find the entrepreneurs of color”
- (35:48) The differences between Black and LatinX communities in tech
- (38:53) The number of meetings it took Yasmin to get her fund closed
Read the MarketWatch article referenced in the episode
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