NEW YORK—Clara Wu Tsai, co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, launched the largest business accelerator for minority founders of early-stage startups on Monday.
Named BK-XL, the accelerator will invest up to $500,000 each in 12 startups led by Black, Indigenous, and other minority founders in 2023.
“Capital is one of the biggest impediments to wealth-building, particularly for BIPOC entrepreneurs,” Wu Tsai told The Associated Press in an interview. “We thought that investing in this segment was how we could create wealth, not only for the entrepreneurs, but also through all the different jobs that they are going to create.”
Increasing investments of venture capital in startups run by minority founders became a priority for many during the racial reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd. According to Crunchbase, only 2.4 percent of all U.S. venture capital raised between 2015–2020 was allocated to startups with Black or Latinx founders. Funding to Black entrepreneurs quadrupled in the first half of 2021 to $1.8 billion. However, investments to minority founders this year have dropped steeply….