Startup Life Show with Ande Lyons · 2023-05-30 · 55 min
Less than 2% of Venture Capital funds go to Women and Minority Owned Businesses. Our guest, Professor Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, is the Founder and Director of the Venture Capital Inclusion Lab at the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown University. With $260,000 in funding from the Kauffman Foundation, Banu launched the lab to investigate WHY this abysmal under 2% number exists and find ways to solve it. During our delicious conversation we dove deep into the data pool to learn what Banu and her team have uncovered and how this data may help improve the funding of under resourced founders . The Venture Capital Inclusion Lab was started in 2018 with funds from Professor Bah-nu’s Kauffman Foundation grant to examine the decision-making and network behaviors of VCs. Today, the Lab focuses efforts on understanding and solving funding inequities in the VC industry through data-driven research, education and advocacy. Banu is also a Professor of Practice at the School of Engineering and Academic Director of the IE Brown University Executive MBA program. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of diversity and inclusion in organizations and in entrepreneurial ecosystems.
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