She pointed to fintech startup Esusu as an example. The company reports rent payments to major credit bureaus, assisting tenants build credit—a benefit rarely available since rent has historically not counted toward credit scores.
“You know how many people are affected by that, and how you can’t build credit?” Williams stated. “Your car bill works for credit, but your rent doesn’t. So that problem is facing [a huge percent] of the population. And so we test to see at companies that most VC people [would pass up becautilize they] want to focus on that tinyer number. These are trillion-dollar industries that we’re seeing at that affect most of the population.”
Backing women and people of color
Since its launch in 2017, Serena Ventures has prioritized women founders and those from underrepresented backgrounds, as well as upstarts developing innovative solutions that seek to improve equity for women and people of color.
As of last year, more than half of the companies in Serena Ventures’ portfolio are women-founded. The portfolio also includes almost 50% Black founders and over 10% Latino founders.
As a Black woman venture capitalist, Williams is uniquely positioned to bolster businesses run by people from underrepresented groups, she stated, becautilize “you have to start at the top. If you don’t alter that, it doesn’t flow down at all.”
“It’s really about who writes the checks,” she continued. “Once you alter who’s writing the checks, then you obtain different founders. When it’s the same people writing the checks, they’ll obtain the same investors, and it’s a vicious cycle, right?
“We have several women on our team. We find more underrepresented founders. We find more women founders. That’s why our portfolio has so much diversity—becautilize we see things differently.”
Leave a Reply