This MBA Student-Run Fund Is A Template For Improving VC Diversity

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE STUDENT-RUN FUND

With Sultani and Heyward leading the SSVF, they’ve made “many amazing changes,” as described by Sultani.

First, they tweaked the education platform they used to onboard new analysts to be more experiential. They added bootcamp training sessions, simulations, seminars, and workshops. Plus, they changed the process of analyst recruitment, onboarding students regardless of background, experience, or Master’s program at the university to ensure that each person has equal opportunity to the experience and education provided.

“When we came in as leaders, our goal was to educate students so that no matter who comes out of this fund, they get the same level of education,” says Heyward.

“Venture Capital is so exclusive to get into,” adds Sultani. “It’s also heavily male-dominated. We focus on recruiting women and women of color and put them in higher leadership roles to make sure that they don’t feel imposter syndrome. It’s hard to go to a board and pitch a group of White, powerful men. We coach them to be successful.”

With the main goal of the management team being to increase representation of women and BIPOC in the VC space, they tapped into their diverse networks to find minority students who wanted to be part of the Fund. “A lot of them feel like they’re not good enough,” says Sultani. “We would push them to apply and help them to get through the interviews. Now, many will be the next leaders.”

The team also brought in diverse speakers and portfolio companies with hopes of helping more students to see themselves in the VC space. With each month corresponding to a specific theme, such as Black History Month in February and Women’s Month in March, the events are open to the rest of the school so that it’s not only the SSVF analysts that get the exposure needed to become better investors and founders.

Along with the operational improvements since their leadership began, Heyward is also designing a program called Pieces 2.0., where he and several other volunteers teach financial literacy to fourth, fifth, and sixth grade kids in a nearby school district. The program aims to give students a sense of how to manage their money, apply a growth mindset, and even start a business. “We’re giving these kids some next-level knowledge that they’ll be able to take with them through their careers and whatever they do. Opportunities like this create the kind of impact we wanted to have with the Fund,” he says.

THE DISCOURAGING STATE OF VC

While interning at Kapor Capital, Sultani realized the immense responsibility of MBA programs in developing the next business leaders. Aside from race and gender, Sultani believes that the biggest barrier to getting work in VC is lack of experience. She stresses the importance of business schools having a student-run fund to help people gain practice in the field. “That way, students can put this experience on their resume to show that they understand VC,” she says.

Heyward expresses his discouragement with the VC space for the way in which it’s created a wealth gap. “If a Black founder brings a deal to a group of all White men, there’s a good chance they’re not going to understand that market,” he says.

From the wealth gap to the unequal opportunity, Sultani is equally as frustrated with the current state of VC — especially in terms of the space’s hierarchy. “There’s the bottom pool, which includes the people who want to become VC analysts. Yet there is no pathway for them to go up the ranks or become a partner,” she says. “There aren’t enough seats at the table; it’s overcrowded and the only way for you to get a seat is to start your own fund. And then the only way you can start your own fund is to get funding from people who don’t look like you or understand what you’re trying to do. It feels like a lose-lose situation sometimes.”

Sultani says that despite some opportunities being given, to really make an impact you need capital and title. “For women who want to start their own fund to invest in female healthcare tech companies, for example, you can’t expect a guy to understand labour or menstruation cycles. We need money. There’s legitimate problems we experience and we need more women doing the funding.”

However, Sultani feels encouraged with the new accountability from VC firms to be more inclusive, likely spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement. With more firms opening up internship programs, she says that the jobs are becoming less exclusive and that there is effort in trying to be less biased about who is selected.

Although a miniscule percentage of venture capitalists are Black, Heyward feels encouraged about those who are in the industry, and hopes that numbers will only increase. “There are some unbelievable General Partners and Black voices in the game right now, and they serve as inspiration,” he says.

GOALS FOR THE FUTURE

On the career front, Sultani and Heyward have exciting things on the horizon.

With hopes to gain more knowledge and experience in technology, Sultani will be joining Microsoft in Seattle in their Global Health Care Cloud Team following graduation. Her goal is to understand how to sell technology and have a better understanding of how it works so that she can go back into VC and become a better investor and advisor to her portfolio companies. Ideally, she’d like to work for a healthcare VC or a women investment firm.

For Heyward, he’ll again be following in his dad’s footsteps as he heads into the pharmaceutical space working at Merck & Co in a Global Vaccine Strategy role. Beyond that, he has dreams to open an innovation hub to help create the next Black and Brown founders that people will look up to. “I want to create a community that uplifts everybody. I want to be able to be a springboard for people to be able to create their dreams,” he says.

While they’ve made incredible progress in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion at SSVF, there’s more work to be done. As Sultani and Heyward near graduation, they’re in the midst of tying up loose ends with the Fund and getting it ready to transition to the next team.

“We need to be able to translate the momentum we’ve built to the next team and make sure that they know the standards we’ve set in terms of diversity,” says Heyward. “We want them to outdo us. That’s the goal. A diversified investor is a smart investor.”

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