A nonprofit aimed at helping Native American founders access capital just got off the ground, founded through a partnership between a Santa Fe-based venture fund and an investment firm in Tennessee.
As the events in Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon are currently reminding audiences, the undermining of Native American business interests and wealth accumulation extends back more than a century.
There’s a big gap when it comes to venture capital flowing to companies founded by Indigenous people. Only 0.004% of the approximately $330 billion in venture capital invested in 2021 went to Indigenous founders, according to data from the VC website Crunchbase.
Let’s be real: diverse entrepreneurs have not been “underserved.” Service is the wrong word. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I recently visited with my friends Maacah Davis and Cindy Willard to discuss how venture capital can better collaborate with Indigenous, queer, Black, Brown, and women founders.
There’s a big gap when it comes to venture capital flowing to companies founded by Indigenous people. Specifically, only 0.004% of the approximately $330 billion in venture capital invested in 2021 went to Indigenous founders, according to data from the VC website Crunchbase.
Native American entrepreneur Kelly Holmes launched the world’s first Native fashion magazine in 2012 and has since expanded it into a thriving digital media platform that highlights indigenous art, culture and entertainment.
As a Miniconjou Lakota from the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, Holmes founded Native Max Magazine 10 years ago. The first Native fashion magazine of its kind blossomed into a full-blown multimedia company that publishes positive stories about Indigenous people across print, digital and social media platforms. And if that wasn’t enough, Holmes now wants to go even further in supporting her community.
My mother had a saying: “you don’t see us on our knees.” This is a Lakota value my mom learned growing up in South Dakota and passed down to me. What it means is that we identify what people need, and we try to meet their needs before they ask. We look out for each other. We don’t exploit other’s weaknesses for our self-gain.
It’s not hard to find the sky falling. Whether it’s the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank or the gloom bells of recession, doom and worry seems to be the tone of current economic news. The United Nations says we’re in a “code red” moment for humanity, and gross domestic product (GDP) growth continues to shrink across the globe.