00:00 Speaker A
One stat that stood out to me and I didn’t get it into it really last time I talked to you, Carter. Um, 40% of M13’s portfolio companies have at least one female co-founder and 39% have at least one non-white co-founder. Talk to us about that and and why is it so, you know, a key mission for your company?
00:16 Carter
Yeah, I think it’s kind of
00:20 Carter
a policy like a a philosophy we believe in, but I also think it’s just good business, right? One of the things we talk about is we want to back founders that have diverse kind of backgrounds, diverse skill sets, diverse point of views. You know, when we’re backing founders in the early stages, we want founders that um are thinking differently than everybody else. and um, you know, so it’s something we track is something that is very important to us kind of as human beings. Um but also we think it’s going to lead to better outcomes, you know, better companies and leaving the world better than we found it.
00:49 Speaker A
You know where we’re not seeing this Carter, in public companies. Um I’m going to I’m going to bite my tongue and I’m not going to say what I want to say, but if you go to a lot of investor relations pages and the lack of diversity, um I it just jumps off the page. It really does. Not only lack of diversity, you know, the boards are constructed whereas in some cases these folks have been on these boards 7, 8, 9, 10 years. Uh unclear like what value they are bringing every single day or they are just sitting there uh collecting a check.
01:10 Carter
Yeah. And how do you think that changes? Do you think that changes or what do you think about it?
01:14 Speaker A
I think it changes on the ground floor and it begins with I think venture capitalist such as yourself. Um, honestly.
01:19 Carter
Yeah.
01:21 Carter
That’s what we talk about all the time, right? We’re early stage, right? So if we can set this stuff up from inception, we actually see much better comes over a much longer period of time.
